


It's Not Living (If It's Not With You)

by starbursts_and_kisses



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Friends to Lovers, Humor, Multi, Pining, Polyamory, Romance, The threesome crackfic nobody asked for, lots of snark
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-15
Updated: 2019-11-04
Packaged: 2020-10-19 01:40:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 37,178
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20649104
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starbursts_and_kisses/pseuds/starbursts_and_kisses
Summary: In a strange twist of events, Arthur unwittingly becomes the Mom Friend, Jaime makes it his mission to exorcise a demoness, and Lyanna falls into the age-old trap of falling for her two best friends.





	1. Sincerity is Scary

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the silliest and most self-indulgent thing I've ever written.

Arthur Dayne was one of the nicest people she had ever met. Lyanna discovered this by accident, right around the time she and Rhaegar were celebrating their three month anniversary of mutually beneficial fucking. Or, well, _dating_, as Brandon so helpfully pointed out to her. Not that Brandon was ever helpful about anything, other than to remind Lyanna that she was constantly making poor life choices and _what did she mean she was going to go backpacking all over Asshai with her boyfriend while leaving him alone with their father to take care of the family business?_

Lyanna’s head hurt just thinking about that particular conversation. She loved her brother, she truly did, but sometimes it was impossible to talk to Brandon without the filter of 18-year-old Dornish wine.

She stared at the unassuming door in front of her, remembered Rhaegar’s insistence that she could “ask Arthur for anything, _trust me_”, and rapped her knuckles on the white polished wood before she had a chance to change her mind. 

A guy dressed in nothing but low riding pajama bottoms answered the door. Given her height, Lyanna was subjected to the rather delightful view of a perfect set of ripped muscles set against tanned skin. She did the math in her head. Rhaegar was lean as fuck and had been named “Sexiest Musician of the Year” five times in a row since his career had taken off and, despite the fact that he’d never stepped foot in a gym in the three months that Lyanna had been fucking slash dating him, she knew for a fact that he’d been blessed with six-pack abs.

This guy had eight. At the least.

“Hi. Are you Arthur?” Lyanna said, sounding snappish as she struggled to break out of her hormone-induced trance long enough to remember that she already had a boyfriend.

“Uhh, yes.” The guy ran a hand through his sleep-mussed hair and blinked at her in confusion. “How can I help you?”

“I’m Lyanna. Rhaegar sent me.”

Without waiting for an invitation, she pushed past him and into a spacious living room decorated in shades of navy and white. It didn’t look particularly lived in, and as she stared at the neat row of shelves and the lack of photographs or paintings in the room, she got the bizarre feeling that she’d just walked into a model unit for one of those condos Barbrey Dustin was forever nagging her to buy. Lyanna was half-tempted to ask him if he really lived there.

“Rhaegar? What for?” 

Arthur Dayne gestured for her to sit on the couch, which she did, but not before shooting him an apologetic smile. “I take it he didn’t tell you then?” 

At Arthur’s headshake, she sighed and went on, “Rhaegar wants to take me on a trip to Asshai. It’s his surprise anniversary present for me. Not that I’d expected one, of course. Do people really give each other extravagant gifts after only three months of dating? Or is that just Rhaegar? Never mind, I see the way you’re looking at me. _Of course,_ it’s just Rhaegar. And to think, I didn’t even have anything planned for him. Do you think he’d settle for a blowjob? Not to brag or anything, but I’m quite skilled at giving head.” 

Arthur was polite enough not to openly gape at her, but Lyanna didn’t miss the odd noise that came out of his throat. She took pity on him and continued, “_So_, Rhaegar says we’re to use his family jet. Only, he can’t come pick me up because he’ll be coming all the way from Dragonstone, which would double the travel time, obviously, and Rhaegar was pretty insistent on getting there before seven. Something about how having breakfast on the beach while watching the sun rise was the best way to commune with nature or shit. I don’t know. I think he's been reading too many Astrology blogs lately -”

“Lyanna_-”_

“- and it’s really messing with his head. The other day, he refused to let me out of his house without drinking a bunch of vitamin pills, because there’s some bullshit about Mercury being in retrograde, and if I didn’t adequately protect myself, my health could deteriorate. I mean, what the fuck, right? If I didn’t know Rhaegar was so smart, I’d say -”

“_Lyanna.”_

Lyanna stopped in the middle of her tirade and risked a glance at Arthur. He looked like he was desperately trying hard not to laugh. “Oh, right. Sorry,” she said, clearing her throat. “Anyway, due to Rhaegar’s fucked up work schedule, I’m in need of someone to drive me to the family estate where they keep the jets. The place is unplottable by GPS - _fucking Targaryens_ \- and I’ve never actually been there. But Rhaegar says you’re one of the only people who knows where it is, so he suggested I come to you.”

Arthur stared at her. “Lyanna, it’s three in the morning.”

“I’m aware.”

“Rhaegar woke you up because he wanted to go to Asshai on a whim, so you - you came here and woke _me _up so that I can drive you out of town. At three in the morning?”

Lyanna shrugged, aware of how ridiculous the whole thing was now that he’d said it like that. “It’s terrible, I know. And I have no excuse except, well… it’s _Rhaegar.”_

Arthur groaned and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Right.”

* * *

Thirty minutes later, she was on the passenger seat of Arthur’s Bentley, fiddling with the buttons on the car stereo and watching him sip his coffee in between traffic light stops. 

“So, how exactly did you get saddled with a shitty best friend?” she asked him, trying hard not to appear distracted as she stared at the way his shirtsleeves clung attractively to his biceps.

“My family used to work for Rhaegar’s father, so I was at his house a lot,” Arthur explained. “We’ve been friends since we were kids.”

Lyanna snorted. “Bet you’re regretting that friendship now, aren’t you?” she said. “When Rhaegar said you wouldn’t mind dropping me off, I wasn’t actually sure I believed him. This kind of favor? Hell, I’m not even sure I’d do this for my own brother.”

“Says the girl Rhaegar’s been dating. You know, you’re hardly in a position to judge.” On anyone else, those words would have sounded condescending, but on mild-mannered Arthur Dayne, it had the opposite effect. Lyanna reminded herself to tell him one of these days that he’d make an excellent therapist. 

“Touché.”

“So how are you and Rhaegar doing?” Arthur risked a glance at her before turning his attention back on the road. “His aura of, shall we say, existential angst has lessened significantly since he’s started dating you. He must really like you.”

“Eh. He has his moments.” Lyanna shrugged and leaned back further in her seat. “He’s also really good with his hands. You wouldn’t know it just by looking at him, but - _god. _That man has some excellent fine motor skills...”

“Uh, right.”

At Arthur’s disgruntled expression, she laughed. “I’m surprised you don’t know this about him. Aren’t guys supposed to talk about their sex life, like, all the time? Measure each other’s dick and stuff?”

“No," Arthur said, shaking his head. “Rhaegar never talks to me about his dating life.”

“Seriously? Wow, that’s so sad,” Lyanna said. “Don’t worry, if Rhaegar and I ever break up, I’ll be sure to tell you.”

* * *

Two weeks later, she made good on her promise.

“Did you know that Rhaegar never even had the decency to break up with Elia the entire time we’d been seeing each other?” was the first thing she said as a surprised Arthur let her inside his apartment.

The tiny part of her brain that still operated like a hormonal teenager noted that Arthur was fully dressed this time. She allowed herself a moment to feel disappointed, but then at the sight of him in a white button down shirt and work slacks, she conceded that his appeal didn’t diminish in the slightest. He looked very fetching in white.

“Wait, how did you get past the doorman?” Arthur asked her, looking bewildered at her sudden intrusion. “I meant to ask you last time but I forgot.”

“Duncan and I are friends now,” Lyanna replied with a careless shrug.

“You’ve only been here at my apartment twice,” Arthur pointed out.

“So? He likes my jokes.” 

Arthur stared at her as though she was the strangest thing he’d ever seen. To be fair, she probably was. He flashed her a puzzled smile. “I guess I should consider myself lucky then, that you decided to visit me during regular hours. Got tired of wandering around other people’s homes at three in the morning?”

“Oh, c’mon. That was one time.” Lyanna peered distrustfully at him and wagged a finger at him. “And don’t think you can distract me by trying to change the subject. I’m here because your bastard of a best friend was cheating on Elia. With me. Without me being aware of it. Did you know?”

“What? No.” Arthur sounded so genuinely surprised at Lyanna’s news that she found her anger towards him melting. She’d come to him with the intention of maiming him and grilling him about Rhaegar’s terrible betrayal, but the last thing she expected was for Rhaegar’s supposed best friend to side with her, much less express sympathy and indignation on her behalf.

Arthur rummaged through his fridge for an unopened bottle of beer and offered it to her. “Care to tell me what happened?”

Lyanna opened the lid with her bare teeth and took a long swallow. When she slammed the bottle down on the counter, her grey eyes were blazing with fury. “He made me believe that he and Elia were already broken up when we started dating. And when I asked him why Elia left for Dorne with the impression that she and Rhaegar were doing long distance, he said he didn’t know, that maybe Elia had misunderstood,” she said, the muscle on her left cheek twitching. “According to Rhaegar, he didn’t bother telling her he’d moved on in person because he thought it was already implied when he didn’t follow her to Dorne. So then I asked him why he still kept in contact with Elia if he believed they were already over, and he said he only did it because he wanted them to at least still be friends. Christ, I’d never heard of such bullshit in my life! I knew Rhaegar was a bit strange, but I’d always thought he was _decent, _you know?I never imagined he’d be capable of doing something this hurtful.” 

Arthur laid a gentle hand on her shoulder. “I’m sorry,” he said, sounding more contrite than Rhaegar had even been when he’d said the same words to her yesterday. “I know you have every right to be mad at him, but I don’t think Rhaegar intentionally did this to hurt you. Or Elia. It doesn’t excuse his behavior, but from what I gathered, he likes you. _Really _likes you. I wish I’d known about this though. I could’ve warned you. Elia too. She and my sister are friends.” 

“Yeah, well. I’m sure she hates me now. I don’t blame her,” Lyanna replied, not even bothering to hide her grimace. Martells were notorious for nursing grudges. “And the worst part was she found out about the whole thing through her brother Oberyn. He saw Rhaegar and I at Leywn’s party last night and managed to put two and two together. I’ve never been so humiliated in my life. I hate that Rhaegar did this to me. He made _me _the other woman.”

Arthur opened his mouth to speak, but whatever comforting words he was about to share were drowned out by the sound of Lyanna’s phone ringing. She glanced at the screen for a fraction of a second. Her lips curled into a snarl when she saw who was calling.

“Aaand that would be Rhaegar.” She viciously rejected his call and dropped her phone back in her purse. “Asshole.”

“I take it you’ve broken up with him then?” 

“If by broken up, you mean torched his entire collection of Astrology books and smashed his grand piano to pieces, then yes, we’ve broken up,” Lyanna declared hotly.

Arthur looked at her with a mixture of horror and intrigue. “Remind me never to get on your bad side,” he said.

“Don’t worry. You’re officially forgiven for being Rhaegar’s best friend _and_ for not knowing about Elia,” Lyanna reassured him with a smile. “Right now though, I could really use another drink. Do you have any more beer?”

“No, afraid not,” Arthur replied. “That bottle I gave you was the last one.”

“Oh.” Lyanna exhaled. “Well, that’s okay. I know a good pub that’s open at this hour. Want to come?”

“What, like right now?”

“No, best we wait until twilight. _Yes, _right now.”

She glanced over her shoulder at Arthur and noticed that he hadn’t moved an inch. He smiled at her, those strangely colored eyes that reminded her of Rhaegar twinkling with amusement. “I can’t go drinking with you at this hour, Lyanna,” he patiently told her. “I have to go to work. You know? Like regular people.”

Lyanna resisted the urge to pout in a way that was most unbecoming. Her brothers were out of town, Howland was meeting with a client, and all her other so-called Northside friends were otherwise engaged. There was always Rhaegar, she supposed, but she’d be damned before she’d let him crawl his way back to her. She would never be that desperate ever again. 

“Where’s work?” she asked Arthur instead, hiding her disappointment behind a sunny smile.

“I’m... with the FBI.” 

“A cop? Well, _well_.” Lyanna raised one eyebrow. Arthur suddenly became a lot more interesting. “No wonder you’re so nice.”

“You think I’m nice?”

“The nicest,” Lyanna said with a smile. “You’d have to be, if your best friend is Rhaegar. I’d petition you for sainthood status, if I could.”

Arthur chuckled. “No one’s ever called me a saint before.”

“There’s always a first time for everything,” Lyanna told him cheekily. “Blowing off work, drinking with a new friend...”

“I’m really sorry, but I can’t.”

Lyanna stuck out her tongue at him. “You’re no fun,” she grumbled. “Fine. But you owe me one, okay?”

“Alright,” Arthur agreed.

If Lyanna hadn’t been so convinced of his inherent goodness, she’d have been suspicious by the lack of resistance on his part. But Arthur seemed like a good cop, and he probably trusted his instincts enough to know that Lyanna wouldn’t take kindly to being rejected. After all, given enough motivation, she was perfectly capable of making her revenge to Rhaegar look like child’s play. 

“Great! That’s settled, then!” Lyanna exclaimed happily, hooking her arm through Arthur’s and tugging him all the way to the front door. “Walk me to the lobby, yeah? Maybe I can convince Duncan to skive off work. There’s got to be someone in this building who _isn’t_ a complete killjoy.”

* * *

She met Arthur at her favorite pub three days later. She spent an inordinate amount of time reminding him that they weren’t on a date, and she didn’t know whether to be relieved or insulted at the casual way he laughed at her and respected her wishes enough not to press the issue. She liked Arthur, and she wasn’t dimwitted enough to deny that he was an attractive and kind man who would make a really nice boyfriend, but she was still recovering from the colossal disaster that was dating Rhaegar, and the last thing she needed was to jump from one relationship to another, and with Rhaegar’s best friend, no less. As angry as she was with him, she wasn’t that petty.

It also didn’t help that Lyanna had a terrible track record when it came to dating, though it wasn’t for her lack of trying. Her relationship with Rhaegar was the longest she’d had so far, and look where that had gotten her. She could flirt with Arthur all she wanted, but if she actually tried to date him, she wasn’t optimistic that things would end well. She’d fuck it up. She always fucked things up. And she liked Arthur too much to settle for a few measly weeks of casual dating when she could just as easily cultivate a friendship with him that could last years. So she shoved whatever tempting thoughts she had about him aside and proceeded to treat him just like she would any other friend.

This invariably led to her getting steadily drunker and drunker as the night wore on. It wouldn’t have been a problem, except Arthur downed one drink for every four shots Lyanna took. She desperately wanted the man to loosen up, but considering how much of a feat it already was that she’d managed to convince him to come to the pub with her tonight, she figured it would probably be best if she didn’t push her luck too much.

“That fucking _asshole_,” Lyanna whined as she slumped on her seat, her tear-stained face perfectly level with Arthur’s untouched glass of beer. “I wish I could say he wasn’t even that good in bed, but then I’d be lying. Fucking pianist with his fucking piano hands. God, I hate him! I wish I’d never met him.”

Arthur smiled sympathetically at her. His hand rubbing circles on her back was doing wonders to her throbbing headache. How could someone be so good at comforting people? If Lyanna was sober enough, she’d have asked him that.

“If it makes you feel any better, Rhaegar isn’t doing so well either,” he told her. “He hasn’t left his house in days. His manager is worried he’ll cancel his upcoming tour and his entire PR team is working themselves ragged to make sure the press doesn’t get wind of this.”

“Oh, boo hoo,” Lyanna replied, unmoved. “His career can rot for all I care. If you see him again, tell him that if he ever dares to show his face to me again, I’ll punch him on the balls so fucking hard he’ll wish he’d never been born.”

Arthur’s mouth twitched. “Okay.”

Lyanna’s only response was to snatch Arthur’s drink and signal for the bartender for another round. 

Two hours and ten tequila shots later, they stumbled out of the pub well past closing time. 

A part of Lyanna wished that he would at least use this opportunity to take advantage of her - she wouldn’t mind a drunken kiss, really - but Arthur, she was quickly beginning to realize, was a gentleman through and through. He was like a prince from a fucking storybook.

Despite the fact that he didn’t have work tomorrow, he’d paced himself with his drinking because he was cognizant enough to realize that someone had to look out for drunk Lyanna. And drunk Lyanna had not been pretty. She’d cried, sang horrible break up songs in front of a crowd despite the fact that it wasn’t Karaoke Night and, at one point, was pretty sure that she’d propositioned a married gay man and asked him if she could pet his hair. No wonder Arthur hadn’t been tempted to kiss her even once.

All too soon, they reached the front steps of her building. Arthur asked her if she’d need help going up the stairs, but Lyanna shook her head and insisted that she wasn’t an invalid and that he’d done quite enough for her already. 

“Thanks for coming with me tonight, Arthur,” she slurred, throwing her arms around him as though they’d known each other for years.

“It’s nothing.” Arthur brushed a few limp curls from her cheek and stared at her. For a moment, Lyanna allowed herself to suffer under the delusion that he was about to kiss her. He certainly looked like he wanted to, if the tremulous way he seemed to be touching her was any indication. 

But Lyanna remembered the promise she’d made to herself, so before she had a chance to completely fuck things up with Arthur, she squeezed his shoulders one last time and stepped away. “You’re a good friend,” she told him with a smile. “And just so you know, I’m stealing you from Rhaegar.”

Arthur laughed at the determined and childish glint in her eyes.

“Hey, I’m serious,” Lyanna said. “If I have to get one godforsaken thing from this messed up, sham of a relationship, it’s you. And I’m not gonna settle for joint custody either. Rhaegar will be lucky if he even gets visitation rights.”

As Lyanna walked up to her apartment, brain all fuzzy from the alcohol, she thought of how much fun she’d had over the last couple of hours. 

She had meant what she said to Arthur though. She was going to steal him from right under Rhaegar’s nose or die trying.

* * *

“Oh my _god_, you will never _guess_ what I just heard.”

Lyanna sauntered into Arthur’s apartment with all the grace of a rampaging rhino. She shook off her rain-spattered coat and left it hanging on one of those pristine white arm chairs that Arthur never seemed to use despite having owned it for years, and continued, “Did you know that Rhaegar - _oh_.” 

She stopped mid rant and dimly registered the fact that Arthur wasn’t alone. There was a man sitting on the couch next to him, a half-empty bottle of wine between them. He looked younger than Arthur’s (and by extension, Rhaegar’s) usual group of friends, but then again, judging by his untucked shirt and slightly swollen lips, maybe _friends_ wasn’t really the right term.

“Oh. Sorry, I didn’t know you had company,” Lyanna said hastily, averting her gaze. She cursed herself for not calling Arthur before she came. Ever since that time at the pub so long ago, she’d developed the nasty habit of dropping by his apartment unannounced, usually so she could use him as a soundboard for all her Rhaegar-related revenge schemes and overall rants about the shitty state of her life, and it had never been a problem before, so how was she to know that this time would be different?

Arthur, being the saint that he was, didn’t even look unkindly upon the intrusion. “Lyanna, I’d like you to meet Jaime,” he said. “Jaime, this is Lyanna. Remember, I told you about her? She’s -”

“The meddling bitch that just interrupted our make out session because she couldn’t be bothered to knock? Yeah, I kinda got that.”

The blond, who Arthur had introduced as Jaime, glared at Lyanna with such vehemence she was surprised she didn’t spontaneously combust right there in the middle of Arthur’s living room. He was handsome enough, she supposed, with a patrician nose and a fine bone structure that complemented the golden sheen of his hair, but right now Lyanna didn’t care how pretty he was or how, under normal circumstances, he looked exactly like her type because there was no mistaking the fact that, right now, he’d just called her a bitch. She didn’t even _know_ him. He had some fucking nerve. 

“Ex_cuse_ me?” Lyanna’s eyes narrowed into slits. “Come up here and say that again to my face, bastard.”

“Oh, gladly,” the man Arthur had called Jaime sneered. “Except I’m pretty sure your kind of crazy is contagious, so excuse _me_ if I don’t feel like jumping up and down with joy at the thought of sullying myself with the likes of you.”

Lyanna’s jaw dropped to the floor. _The sheer unbelievable nerve of him_. She turned to Arthur, looking thoroughly betrayed, and said, “Arthur, where did you find this guy? Did you take a detour to hell, by any chance?” 

“Hell? You mean the place where they spawned you?” Jaime obnoxiously replied.

Lyanna took a deep breath and willed herself to remain calm. “Arthur,” she said sweetly, “How far along in our friendship would we have to be before we reach the level where you’d be willing to cover up a murder for me?”

Arthur shot her a pained look. “There will be no killing in my home, Lya,” he reminded her. “And to answer your other question, Jaime is… well, he’s my co-worker, actually.”

“Wait, wouldn’t that make you, like, his boss? Oh _ho_.” Lyanna’s eyebrows rose, and for a moment, she forgot about the antagonistic looks Jaime was sending her way. “Arthur, you sneaky little bastard! I didn’t know you had it in you.”

Arthur’s normally tan skin turned several shades darker. “Technically, there’s no rule against it.”

Lyanna’s gaze swept over Jaime’s disheveled form, trying to pretend like there wasn’t anything remotely attractive about the way he’d left the top three buttons of his shirt open to show a hint of smooth skin. “Well, personally, I don’t see the appeal,” she drawled.

“No one asked you, you soul-sucking, two-faced demoness,” Jaime retorted.

“Well, considering you’re a fucking waste of oxygen, I don’t think I care much for your opinion.”

“Now, now, children,” Arthur admonished, effectively stepping in between the two of them and quelling them with a look. “Settle down.”

“But he started it! He called me a bitch!”

Jaime scoffed. “_He started it_? What are you, twelve?” he said snidely. “No, _you_ started it.”

“Ugh, forget it,” Lyanna grumbled as she swiped the bottle of wine on the couch despite Jaime’s indignant protests and put her coat back on. “I’m leaving. Sorry, Arthur. I’ll come back another time, when the air in your apartment is a little less filthy.”

She turned around and missed the sight of Jaime flipping her off. 

* * *

“What are _you_ doing here?” Lyanna exclaimed when the door opened to reveal Jaime Lannister’s haughty face. She muscled her way inside the apartment when it became clear that Jaime was about three seconds away from shutting the door in her face and went off in search of Arthur.

She followed the tantalizing smell of bacon and toast and found him in the kitchen, shirtless and wearing a purple apron that looked so good on him it should’ve been illegal. “Hi, Lya,” he greeted her fondly, too used to her impromptu visits by now to be bothered by her appearance. “Have you had breakfast yet?”

“Nope.” Lyanna made herself comfortable on the kitchen island and grabbed an empty plate. She glanced at him and added, “Arthur, I thought your neighborhood practiced proper waste disposal.”

“They do, yes.”

“Then why the hell is the trash still here?” Lyanna whined, pointing a finger at Jaime.

Jaime scowled darkly, looking torn between wanting to strangle her to death or pushing her face into the oven. “Permission to kick your stray pet out of your apartment, Art?” he said to Arthur.

“Permission denied. This apartment is a violence-free zone,” Arthur said in his best cop voice.

“Maybe you should’ve thought of that before inviting him here,” Lyanna replied in between bites of her toast. _Damn_, Arthur could cook.

“At least I was actually invited. Whereas you,” Jaime jabbed a finger at her as though she was an annoying pest he needed to exterminate, “You prance around the place without regard for propriety or boundaries because Arthur is too nice to tell you to mind your own fucking business -”

Lyanna raised her eyebrows. “Wow, how eloquent. And here I thought he had the vocabulary of a first grader,” she mock-whispered to Arthur.

“- but I’ve got news for you, you demonic creature -”

Arthur shrugged. “They have this thing at home where his brother tells him one SAT word per day and makes him memorize them. Something about proving a point to their father. Jaime is quite sensitive about that, actually.”

“- I’m not going to stand by and watch you infringe upon our daily lives like the goddamn parasite that you are -”

Lyanna snickered. “You sure know how to pick ‘em, _Art_.” 

“- so if you could _kindly_ crawl back to whatever hellhole you’re from, I would very much - hey, are you even listening to me? Wolf bitch! I’m talking to you!”

Lyanna paused from her conversation with Arthur and slowly, painstakingly, tilted her head to stare at Jaime. “You done?”

Jaime’s face turned several shades of red. He looked mad enough to spit fire. “Not even close,” he snapped.

“Well, feel free to carry on, then.” Lyanna flapped her hand vaguely in the air and, without even waiting for Jaime to go through his new list of insults, she leaned closer to Arthur and said, “Did you know that Rhaegar was writing a song about me?”

Arthur’s eyebrows shot up so high it nearly touched his hairline. “No, I didn’t.”

“It’s terrible,” Lyanna said, wincing. “I read a rough draft of the lyrics earlier this morning. Rhaegar really overdid it this time. He made me look like some sort of seductress who drowns men in their sleep.”

“But you _are_ a seductress,” Arthur pointed out teasingly. “How did you manage to get a hold of a rough draft?”

Lyanna smirked. “Elia,” was her simple reply. “She and I are collaborating now to make Rhaegar’s life on Earth hell. I find it provides a rather solid foundation for a long lasting friendship.”

“Christ, you two are scary.”

A noise from behind them swallowed whatever clever retort Lyanna had at the ready. She shifted her attention away from Arthur and came face to face with a fuming Jaime. One of the blood vessels in his eye looked ready to burst. “Are you two fucking done trying to ignore me?” he growled.

Lyanna heaved a long suffering sigh and proceeded to do just that, knowing it was the one thing guaranteed to push all of his buttons. She shared a look with the purple-eyed man beside her and said in her most petulant voice, “Arthur, I _don’t_ like him.”

* * *

**Arthur Dayne: **Hey

**Jaime Lannister: **sup 

**Lyanna Stark: **hi

**Jaime Lannister: **oh great. the devil is part of the facebook group chat

_Lyanna Stark changed Jaime Lannister’s nickname to Satan’s Handmaid_

_Satan’s Handmaid changed his nickname to Golden Lion_

_Lyanna Stark changed Golden Lion’s nickname to Golden Fuckboy_

_Golden Fuckboy changed Lyanna Stark’s nickname to Wolf Bitch_

**Arthur Dayne: **Language

**Golden Fuckboy: **....

**Wolf Bitch: **....

**Arthur Dayne: **Seriously, you two

**Arthur Dayne: **If you don’t behave, I’ll ban you at my apartment 

**Golden Fuckboy: **oh please 

**Golden Fuckboy: **i can break into your apartment with my eyes closed

**Arthur Dayne: **Really? Wanna bet? 

**Golden Fuckboy: **fuck i just got chills 

**Wolf Bitch: **weirdly enough, me too

**Wolf Bitch: **no wonder the crime rate in this city is down

**Wolf Bitch: **arthur, you’re scary af

**Arthur Dayne: **I won’t be, if you guys will just play nice 

**Golden Fuckboy: **ugh fine

**Wolf Bitch: **you’re no fun

_Golden Fuckboy changed Wolf Bitch’s nickname to Wolfgirl_

_Wolfgirl changed Golden Fuckboy's nickname to Lion Boy_

**Arthur Dayne: **See? That wasn’t so hard now was it?

_Wolfgirl changed Arthur Dayne’s nickname to Saint Arthur_

* * *

“It wasn’t just a song,” Lyanna screeched. “He wrote an entire fucking album about me! And he didn’t even have the decency to think of a creative title. _Songs About Lyanna?_ Really? He couldn’t have just left me the fuck alone?”

“_The Rose of Winterfell_ is currently number one on Spotify. Three days running,” a gleeful Jaime told her. “Personally, I rather like the lyrics, especially that bit about opening you up like a flower in spring. Who knew the Silver Prince could be so sensual?”

Arthur wordlessly pointed to the Snark Jar. Jaime shot him a mutinous look and grumbled about Arthur’s constant need to spoil all his fun, but a few moments later, he grudgingly produced a twenty dollar bill from his pocket and dropped it into the jar, which was now full to bursting. Lyanna herself had contributed earlier, thanks in part to her suggestions to volunteer to chop off Jaime’s hand just because. 

Arthur brought a hand to his temple, already calculating how many days he had left before he’d finally be able to buy that shiny coffee maker he’d been coveting for weeks. If Lyanna and Jaime kept up with their arguments, Arthur would rob them dry of every last spare change they had, not that money was ever an issue with them. But either way, he would be several hundred dollars richer.

“His songs are being played everywhere,” Lyanna complained, shoulders trembling and hands fisted in her hair as she continued to pace the length of Arthur’s apartment in a near constant state of agitation. Already, she’d had to field off several questions from her good-for-nothing employees, asking her if she was _that_ Lyanna and if so, how did she know Rhaegar and would it be possible for her to get them his autograph? As someone who valued her privacy a lot, this was the worst form of torture. And what sucked even more was that Rhaegar wasn’t even aware that he’d caused it. He thought that by publicly declaring his love for her, he could win her back. He was such a fucking _Targaryen_.

“Arthur, can you help me get away with manslaughter? Just this once?” she pleaded, employing her best puppy dog eyed look. Unsurprisingly, Arthur had developed an immunity to such tricks.

“Hey, leave my boyfriend out of this,” Jaime said snidely.

Lyanna arched an eyebrow, ignoring the sickening feeling in her gut at his admission. She would not be jealous. She would not be jealous. She would not be jealous.

“Boyfriend, huh?” she remarked in a too casual voice. “I wasn’t aware you were anything other than a lousy fuck buddy. Honestly, Arthur. I’m so disappointed in you. You could do so much better. You’re too good for this fuck up.”

Jaime’s jaw clenched, and Lyanna realized a moment too late that she’d crossed some sort of line. She wondered if she should apologize for having taken it too far, but before she could say another word, Jaime sent her his most scathing glare, muttered something to Arthur about his appalling taste in friends and how the world would be a better place if someone just fucking _exorcised_ Lyanna already, before storming out in a huff and slamming the door shut to Arthur’s bedroom.

In the wake of Jaime’s tantrum, Arthur stared at her, the expression on his face eerily similar to that of her father’s back when she was five and he’d had to scold her for sneaking out of her bedroom late at night so she could feed the horses. “It’s not my place to tell you Jaime’s story, Lya. But I will say this. He’s made some life-changing choices in the past and has been beating himself up over it ever since, which is why he reacted the way he did,” he told her. “But he’s a wonderful person once you get to know him. I just wish you’d give him a chance.”

Lyanna swallowed down the guilt rising in her throat. Perhaps she had been a tad bit unfair to Jaime. He was callous, yes, and prone to snapping at her, but she was hardly any better. She’d stooped down to his level every time and matched him insult for insult. It certainly wasn’t the way her father had raised her to be. And Arthur had been so patient with her thus far. He didn’t deserve to be stuck in the middle of their childish wars. 

“Okay, Arthur. I’ll… I’ll try,” she said hesitantly.

* * *

A week later, she showed up with two VIP football tickets. She’d been planning to take Benjen with her but decided at the last minute to swing by Arthur’s place after having heard Jaime complain the other night about how hard it was to score tickets because apparently, the game organizers held a particular grudge against Lannisters.

She threw the envelope with the tickets on the coffee table as though she didn’t give a single fuck and lied, “Rhaegar got me these. Before the break up. I don’t want it anymore. You go have it.”

Jaime called her an uncultured swine who couldn’t even recognize a good thing when she had it, but Arthur snatched the tickets up gratefully and thanked her for the gift before Jaime had the grace to reject them out of some misguided sense of pride and stubbornness. The sheer brilliance of Arthur’s smile nearly blinded her.

In the end, Arthur managed to snag a third ticket from one of his contacts at work and Lyanna ended up sitting next to him on the bleachers, Jaime on his other side. Lyanna expected the whole thing to be awkward, annoying, and painful. To her surprise, it was neither of those things. 

Arthur bought them overpriced hotdogs, Jaime insulted players left and right, and Lyanna started a betting pool, which she ended up winning thanks to Jaime, whose obsession with the home team drove her to cheer for the opposing team out of spite. 

To appease them both, she decided to treat them to dinner with her winnings. But they got banned from the restaurant before they even had time to sample their steak because Jaime got in a heated argument with one of the waiters over the lackluster quality of the wine, and Lyanna was reminded, yet again, never to underestimate Jaime’s ability to piss off people. 

They ended up getting pizza and spicy chicken wings takeout while watching a documentary about serial killers at Arthur’s apartment, and though by all rights, the day should’ve been a disaster, Lyanna went home that night with a smile on her face_._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So initially, this was supposed to be a one-shot, but halfway through writing, I realized that I couldn't fit everything in just one chapter, so I decided to divide the fic into several parts. Will probably post four or five chapters more after this. Expect an update in a couple of days.
> 
> I'm a little apprehensive about starting a multi-chapter fanfic (anyone who knows me on this site knows that I'm not exactly keen on writing multi-chapter fics where I'll be forced to update regularly), but I thought it would be nice to try something new for a change. Also in the realm of something new: threesome fics. So yeah, failure or not, this'll be an interesting experiment.


	2. A Change of Heart

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Angsty Jaime makes an appearance.

Lyanna was having a shitty day. She had been late to a meeting with a client, she’d had to cover for Brandon to her father, of all people, and the coffee shop across the street had run out of her favorite iced latte. On top of that, she kept hearing Rhaegar’s songs everywhere she went.

So of course, when she stopped by Arthur’s place for her usual quad-weekly rant about how much it sucked to be her, her day went from shitty to worse.

“Jesus fucking Christ, woman, have you _not_ heard of knocking?”

Lyanna dry heaved in a corner and tried with all her might to banish the image of Jaime on his knees, Arthur’s lithe hands fisted in his hair. Her cheeks burned, and she ignored the warm feeling coiling in her gut as she looked away and waited for them to put on some clothes.

She was by no means a prude, having seen her share of accidental sexual encounters in her pathetically adult excuse for a life, but seeing the evidence of Arthur and Jaime’s passion for each other firsthand unsettled her in ways she could not even begin to comprehend. Though Jaime wasn’t one to shy away from physical affection, Arthur wasn’t a particularly demonstrative person – out of respect for Lyanna, no doubt – and thus far she had managed to avoid bearing witness to anything more than quick pecks on the lips and the occasional stolen caress.

Until tonight, that is.

“For once in your life,” a sexually frustrated Jaime exclaimed, “can’t you just - _just_ once - refrain from picking locks and being the biggest cockblock in the history of all cockblocks?”

Lyanna frowned. “Locks? What are you talking about? Why would I pick locks?” 

Jaime glared daggers at her. “Explain how you managed to get inside then, when both Arthur and I distinctly remember locking the door on our way in.”

“Um, duh? Because I have a key?”

“You gave her a key to your apartment?” Jaime asked Arthur, looking betrayed.

“No, I didn’t,” Arthur replied, bewildered.

“Don’t get your panties in a twist, Lannister,” Lyanna said with a roll of her eyes. “I spared you all the hassle and made myself a duplicate copy of Arthur’s key. Yes, you’re welcome.”

Both men looked dumbfounded. 

“_Fucking_ hell. You really are a complete psycho!”

"You stole my key? Lya, you do know I’m a man of the law, right?”

Lyanna huffed. “It’s not stealing,” she denied. “It’s _borrowing_. Honestly, Arthur. Do keep up.”

“You’re incorrigible,” Arthur said, shooting her an affectionate smile despite her growing list of sins against him. Lyanna wondered what god she’d managed to please in her past life for her to be given someone as nice as Arthur Dayne in her life. Maybe the universe was overcompensating her for Rhaegar. In which case, she would gladly accept any and all reparations made to her.

“What she is is a menace,” Jaime declared.

“Oh, come off it, Lannister.” Lyanna batted her eyelashes at him and said in a sickeningly sweet voice that was sure to aggravate Jaime further, “If you’re that mad that I managed to interrupt your little blowjob session, maybe I can make it up to you. I don’t do charity cases often, mind you, but for Arthur’s sake, I can make an exception for you. I draw the line at actual sex though. I don’t think your poncy little ass could handle it. So, what’ll it be? Blowjob? Handjob? Take your pick.”

Lyanna would be lying if she said she didn’t enjoy the way Jaime flushed from his neck all the way to the tips of his ears. If he wasn’t such an asshole, she might even consider him cute. She allowed herself a moment to wonder if her words had made his blood rush to other parts of his anatomy before mentally slapping herself and reminding herself that he was the enemy. He’d stolen Arthur from her, after all.

“How - how dare you -” Jaime sputtered, eyes comically wide with rage. “That you would even insinuate - wolf bitch, I wouldn’t touch you if you were the last woman on Earth!”

Lyanna winked at him, her earlier embarrassment at having walked in on Jaime and Arthur engaging in carnal relations now completely forgotten. Just the way she liked it. “That’s okay. I’m not into mangy lions anyway.”

Jaime clenched his teeth so hard it was a wonder they didn’t fall off. “For the love of _God_, Art, can I please, _please_ just kill her?”

Arthur simply stared at the two of them and pointed at the Snark Jar. 

He ignored their heated protests and went back to daydreaming about the brand new, state-of-the-art coffee maker that was soon to be his.

* * *

She was trapped in the middle of a business meeting with her father and Jon Arryn when she received Arthur’s vague but equally perplexing text. She paused in the act of doodling a stick figure that hilariously resembled Brandon, but with horns - they’d gotten into an argument earlier that morning about her brother’s inability to stay away from Lyanna’s female friends, a fact that had caused her endless grief over the past few months - and stared at the flashing text in front of her.

**_Lya, are you busy?_**

_No. What’s up?_

** _I need a favor._ **

Lyanna's mouth dropped open. It was the first time Arthur had ever asked her for such a thing. Normally, it was Lyanna asking him for favors, not the other way around. And Arthur had never once failed to grant one to her, no matter how absurd it was.

_Anything._

** _Can you check in on Jaime?_ **

Lyanna almost dropped her phone in shock. Oh no. No, no, no, no, _no_. Anything but that. Internally, she cursed Arthur a thousand times. Why couldn’t he have asked her for something simpler? Like robbing a bank or, hell, donating one of her kidneys? Any one of those things was doable. But checking in on Jaime Lannister? That was unchartered territory. 

And what did that even mean? Lyanna thought. Checking in on him? Just what was she required to do? And why couldn’t Arthur be the one to do it? 

**_Something’s wrong with him,_** Arthur’s next message said.

** _He left me a bunch of incoherent voice mails a while ago. I tried calling him back, but he wouldn’t answer._ **

** _Normally I’d hate to ask you, but I’m out of town working on a case and wouldn’t be back until tomorrow. _ **

** _I’m worried about him, Lya. Can you help?_ **

Lyanna groaned, her thumb hovering over the letters on the screen. Eyes shut, she pressed the _send_ button before she could change her mind. 

_Of course._

**_Thank you, Lya. _**

**_I’ll text you his address._**

_This better be a goddamn emergency, _she thought angrily to herself as she grabbed her purse and quickly made her excuses before rushing out of the building like a madwoman. She ignored her father’s angered demands for her to come back and tried hard not to think about what the hell she’d just agreed to. 

She sighed. Oh, the things she’d do for Arthur Dayne.

* * *

Lyanna was no stranger to mansions, having grown up in one almost all her life. The Starks were one of the most prestigious and wealthiest families in Westeros, and her father had done well to keep their various business dealings thriving until such time that he’d see fit to let his children completely take over. 

The Lannisters, however, were an entirely different matter. They were obscenely wealthy in a way not even the Starks were, and Lyanna had never been made more aware of this fact than when she found herself roaming the labyrinthine halls of Lannister Manor. Whereas her own childhood manse was a perfect blend of modern minimalism set against a backdrop of white and muted grey, Jaime’s home was all gold-plated walls and ornery furniture. And though everything sparkled, there was something about the place that was cold and unwelcoming. Rather like Jaime himself, the first time she’d met him.

“Lannister?”

The manor was empty, save for the guards and the handful of maids she’d passed by on her way to Jaime’s room, and had it not been for the staff’s insistence that Jaime had not left the premises, she would have gladly hightailed it out of there just in time to grab a beer with Benjen and Howland.

“Hey, you in there?”

Lyanna pushed open the door to Jaime’s bedroom but was wholly unprepared for the sight that greeted her. Jaime was sprawled out on the floor, his back leaning against the footboard of his bed, gaze fixed on the wall in a near-catatonic state. He looked _terrible_. His normally pristine shirt was wrinkled and untucked and his hair was a messy cloud, as though he’d ran his fingers through it more times than was possibly normal for anyone, but it was his eyes that truly scared her. They were wild and panicked, the green in them almost completely obscured by his widening pupils. 

“Lannister?” Lyanna hesitantly approached him, the way one might approach a skittish deer. The whole thing felt so surreal she contemplated pinching herself just to confirm that she wasn’t hallucinating. When Arthur had told her that something was wrong with Jaime, she certainly hadn’t expected _this_.

Jaime gave her no response. 

Lyanna laid a hand on his shoulder. “Jaime?”

If his strange behavior hadn’t clued her in, the fact that he hadn’t seen fit to swat Lyanna’s hand away was all the proof she needed. Without letting go of his shoulder, she shifted so that she was half-kneeling on the floor next to him. In doing so, she noticed that his lips were moving too fast for her to make out his words.

“What is it?” she asked.

“Fire,” Jaime whispered.

“What?”

“_Fire.”_ Repeating the words triggered something within Jaime. His eyes widened in fear and his entire body trembled. “The fire is spreading.”

“There’s no fire,” Lyanna reassured him, her heart clenching.

“It’s spreading. We have to - we have to save everyone.” A strangled cry escaped Jaime’s throat. “Can’t you see? It’s everywhere. It’s - _god_, it hurts. I’m gonna burn. We’re all gonna fucking burn to death -”

Lyanna was scared to touch him, with him in such a fragile state, but she summoned all her courage and laid both palms against his cheeks. His skin was cold and pale, a stark contrast to the words he kept saying. “Shhh. There’s no fire. You’re safe now,” she murmured.

But this only served to agitate Jaime further. He thrashed in her arms, clawing at his chest and popping several buttons off his shirt, and screamed, “It’s so hot. I can’t - I can’t breathe -”

She tried everything she could to calm him down, but Jaime was having none of it. So in a final act of desperation, she did the only thing she could think of. She herded him to the bathroom, methodically took off all his clothes until he was left standing in nothing but his boxers, and tried not to think about how wrong and utterly insane this whole thing was. She spotted the bathtub in the corner, the one large enough to accommodate five people, possibly more, and dragged him in. When the tub was filled more than halfway through with water, she made a split second decision and joined him.

Throughout it all, Jaime remained silent. Even at the sight of Lyanna in her underwear, he was unblinking. Lyanna couldn’t decide whether she should cry or scream.

She cupped a palmful of icy water and splashed it on Jaime’s chest, her hands gliding from his shoulders all the way to the hard ridges of his abdomen. She repeated the same motions, this time on his face. Tiny drops of water ran down his cheeks in agonizing slow motion.

“Do you still feel warm?” she asked him.

Jaime said nothing.

“Still think the world is burning?”

Silence.

In desperation, Lyanna pushed him underwater. She waited five seconds, mesmerized by the way the golden strands of his hair floated around him like a halo, before pulling him back up with a force that the old Jaime would never have tolerated from her.

“What about now?”

She tipped his chin and forced him to look at her. His eyes glittered with untold horrors, and still he wouldn’t speak. Lyanna felt something within her fracture at the sight.

“Goddammit, Lannister! Fucking say something!”

Fed up with his silence, she punched him hard on the face. He staggered backwards and almost hit the water again, and the silence that followed was so loud it nearly drowned out the echo of her knuckles slamming against his wet skin. 

But then he blinked once. Twice. And slowly but surely, the color came back to his face and the blank sheen to his eyes disappeared.

“Stark?”

Jaime stared at the outline of Lyanna’s bra and then at his own submerged, almost naked appearance. He jerked as though he’d been electrocuted. “The fuck just happened?”

Lyanna was so relieved to see Jaime back to himself that she almost wept. In an effort to redirect the sudden influx of emotions, she rained a series of smacks on his chest. 

“_Ow! _Jesus, that hurt!”

“You. Fucking. Scared. Me,” Lyanna said in between bouts of violence. “Don’t you ever do that to me again, Lannister.”

Sudden understanding filled Jaime’s eyes. “Did I…?”

“You kept screaming about a fire. You said you were burning, that you couldn’t breathe, so I brought you here. It’s stupid, I know.” Lyanna, whose hands had snaked their way to Jaime’s shoulders, felt him tense at her words. Something like shame and mortification flickered on his face before it disappeared entirely and was replaced by his usual mask of haughty indifference.

“You’re… you’re all kinds of fucked up, Lannister,” Lyanna said, lifting the corners of her mouth upwards to show him that she was merely teasing. “No wonder you fight with me all the time. You’re actually batshit crazy.”

Jaime smirked, though there was no heat, no taunt, behind it. It was a strange look on him, and one that screamed vulnerability. “Should’ve known you’d take advantage of me this way so you could strip me naked, Stark.” 

“Don’t flatter yourself,” Lyanna said with a roll of her eyes.

And just like that, they were back on familiar ground. Jaime replied with something scathing, Lyanna hit him again and again until Jaime’s nerves were buzzing, each slap bringing him further and further from the precipice from which he almost fell, and when they had exhausted all the insults that they could possibly think of, Lyanna decided to perform one last act of bravery and asked him the question that had been burning in her mind for the better part of the day, “What happened to you?”

Jaime smiled wryly. “Maybe one day, I’ll tell you.”

It was the closest thing to a “thank you” that she would ever get.

* * *

Two weeks after the bathtub incident, as Lyanna had taken to calling it in her head, she found herself back at Arthur’s apartment, sandwiched between the boys as they argued over what movie to watch that night. Jaime had acted as though nothing had happened, and though it couldn’t have been healthy for him, she bit her tongue and went with it. She responded to his catty remarks and constant antagonism as was expected of her, but if either of them said the words half-heartedly and with less venom than before, no one, least of all Arthur, called them out on it. 

Sometimes, she felt him watching her though. When he thought she or Arthur wasn’t looking, she would feel his eyes raking over her - searching, searching, searching - the heat behind them threatening to turn her insides into jelly. 

She longed to ask him what he wanted from her, but they were still trapped in one of their silly little games, so Lyanna let him be. She didn’t want to make the situation even more awkward than it already was.

But that night, Jaime broke their routine.

After three movies and several boxes of demolished takeout, Arthur kissed Lyanna on the cheek and called it a night, claiming he needed to get up obscenely early the following day for a debriefing. Lyanna was more than welcome to stay for as long as she wanted, of course, but seeing as Jaime made no move to leave either, it was safe to assume that he’d stay the night. And among the many transgressions Lyanna had already committed against him, preventing him from much needed quality time with Arthur was not one she cared to have on her conscience again. At least not now.

Which was why it took her completely by surprise when Jaime stretched his long legs atop the coffee table, thereby preventing Lyanna from making her hasty escape. 

“Leaving so soon?” He arched one perfectly groomed blond eyebrow and motioned to the unopened bottle of whiskey that had suddenly materialized in his hand. “Ugh, _boring_.”

A muscle ticked on her jaw. “Boring?” she repeated. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

Jaime heaved a long-suffering sigh. “It means,” he said, “you have five seconds to sit your ass back down and pour yourself a glass of this fine whiskey right here, lest I forever think of you as the boring bitch who can’t even entertain a guy to save her life.”

Lyanna blinked. “You want me to drink? With you? Right now? Just the two of us? Without Arthur as a buffer?”

“Fucking hell, Stark. Are you stupid or what?” Jaime snapped irritably. “Just sit the fuck down and drink the damned whiskey.”

In response, Lyanna snagged the bottle from his outstretched hand with more force than was strictly necessary and made herself comfortable on the other end of the couch, as far away as possible from Jaime. “You’re such a brat,” she muttered right before taking a swig from the bottle, glasses be damned.

“And you’re such an uncouth creature,” Jaime replied, making a face at the drop of saliva that lingered on the bottle’s rim after she’d had her turn. “Here, give me that.”

Lyanna relinquished the liquor and watched Jaime’s mouth close around it. On anyone else it would’ve looked _uncouth_, but Jaime made the even the most mundane tasks look refined. He was like a fucking prince. Lyanna wanted to slap him. “Trying to get me alone now, are you? Should Arthur be worried?”

Jaime scoffed. “Do try to rein in your delusions, would you? I’m not even drunk yet and you’re already triggering my gag reflex.”

Lyanna smirked. “Let’s get you drunk then.” She motioned for Jaime to take another sip. He did, but not before kicking her on the shin. She snarled and retaliated by tipping the bottle upwards when he took another swig, prompting him to choke on the liquor with watering eyes.

Their childish antics persisted until they managed to finish the entire bottle. Only after they’d swallowed the last drop did Jaime speak. 

“It was my first case,” he said, seemingly out of nowhere. He was so still Lyanna feared he’d stopped breathing altogether, and it reminded her of the moment they’d shared in his bathtub, the way he stared right through her, unseeing, as though she was made of glass, half his body submerged in the water, while all around them the world had ceased to turn, if only for a moment.

“What?” 

“My first case,” Jaime started to explain. “The one that made me all sorts of fucked up. I know you've been dying to ask me about it." He scraped his fingernail against the rough denim of his jeans - back and forth, back and forth - and kept his gaze averted. Lyanna had a feeling that made it easier for him to get the rest of the words out, so she let him.

“I was trying to take down a pyromaniac. He’d killed seventeen people and injured twenty three others. It was my first time working at the FBI, and technically, I wasn’t supposed to be on the case. But I was one of the most promising recruits they’d had in a long time, so I was given special treatment,” Jaime said. “Eventually, I managed to track down the killer. But I was young and arrogant. I thought I could take on the world. So I entered the crime scene without backup. I almost died.”

He looked at her then, the fear and horror in his eyes marrow-deep. “It was my commanding officer. He was not well loved by everyone, but he was respected. And at first I thought I was seeing things. But it really was him. He was pouring gasoline on a dozen tied up people in the middle of a warehouse and burning them. And he was… he was _laughing_. He kept saying, ‘Burn them all’. So I - I did the only thing I could. I shot him on the back of the head. He was dead before he even hit the ground. I tried to rescue as many people as I could, but only five survived from that fire.”

Lyanna swallowed.

“You know how people like us have code names?” Jaime smiled bitterly. “Arthur’s is Sword of the Morning. And I... I used to be Young Lion. But after that night, everyone started calling me Kingslayer.”

Lyanna frowned. “But why? You tried to save everyone and you caught the true killer. Are you telling me that the people in your department are assholes?”

“You know that I’m not a people person, Stark. I never have been,” Jaime said, seemingly unbothered by it. “When I look in the mirror, I see a handsome, talented, productive member of society, but for them, I am nothing more than the arrogant, rich asshole who bought his way to the team. My family isn’t exactly well loved around these parts, and my many, shall we say, _attributes_ haven’t exactly endeared me to the masses. So when word got around about what happened, not everyone was quick to believe me. All the victims were unconscious at the time, so there was no one who could reasonably explain why I just shot my commanding officer in the head and expected to get away with it.”

“But he was there, at the scene of the crime. Isn’t that reason enough to -”

“It doesn’t work that way, Stark. I had no concrete evidence against him, other than my word. For all everyone knew, he could have easily been there to catch the killer when I arrived. Or, and this is one of the more popular theories going around the department, I was the true killer and when I got caught red handed, I framed my boss so I could get away with it.”

“That’s _absurd_ -“

“Yeah, well. That’s the way it is.” Jaime shrugged. “My father took care of everything so I got to keep my job. But work hasn’t been the same since. These days, Arthur is one of the few people who can bear to look me in the eye.”

Lyanna suddenly remembered the words that Arthur had told her weeks ago, the night she’d inadvertently hurt Jaime without meaning to.

_He’s made some life-changing choices in the past and has been beating himself up over it ever since…_

It all made sense now.

“I don’t regret it, Stark,” Jaime told her, his eyes defiant and proud despite the pain he must’ve felt by reliving this particular horror with her. “If I had a chance to go back in time, I’d do it all over again. Every fucking painful moment of it. Even though everyone thinks I don’t deserve my badge. Even though I still hear that fucker’s voice in my dreams sometimes. Even though I panic and get triggered by certain words and certain cases, and end up getting slapped by nosy girls with a mean right hook.”

For a long time, neither one of them spoke.

Then Lyanna lifted her head and looked at him, _really_ looked at him, and said, “Lya.”

Jaime stared back at her, uncomprehending. “What?”

“Lya,” she repeated, her voice so firm it did not leave enough room for argument. “You keep calling me Stark, but… my close friends call me Lya.”

A foreign yet unexpectedly genuine smile flashed across Jaime’s face. Its full force was directed at her.

Lyanna’s throat tightened. She felt as though she was dreaming. She had never been the recipient of one of Jaime’s open smiles before, and she was equal parts annoyed and mortified to know that it seemed to be affecting her the same way Arthur’s smiles affected her. 

The funny feeling didn’t abate when his smile grew wider and he said, “Lya, then.”

* * *

Things with Jaime changed significantly after that. They still bickered constantly, Jaime still kept changing her ringtone to one of Rhaegar’s songs every time Lyanna was careless enough to leave her phone unattended (if she had to hear _Meet Me at the Tower of Joy _one more time, she would scream bloody murder), and she kept up her habit of stealing the expensive hair products Jaime left at Arthur’s apartment for whenever he wanted to sleep over so that by the time he left for work in the morning, his hair was a veritable mess. Jaime was nothing if not vain.

But there was something weird about their arguments now. They occurred less and less frequently, much to Arthur’s amusement and eternal gratitude, and in the event that they did, more often than not, they were punctuated by Jaime’s teasing grins and the soft, utterly delightful way he called her by her nickname. If she didn’t know any better, she’d say he was flirting with her.

Lyanna shivered and dismissed the idea almost as soon as it occurred to her. Just because they’d tentatively decided to become friends now didn’t mean that Jaime would ever think of her that way. It didn’t matter that he and Arthur were bisexual. Jaime’s boyfriend was still her best friend. The whole thing was probably just Jaime’s version of being friendly. 

At the rate their relationship was going though, they were bound to put a dent to Arthur’s beloved Snark Jar. Not that either of them knew that, of course.

Arthur sighed and stared accusingly at them. “You guys owe me a coffee maker.”

Lyanna and Jaime exchanged confused looks with one another and wondered what the hell _that_ was about.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ahh, the angst. Wasn't expecting that either tbh. I swear, this chapter just wrote itself. It's almost like I had zero control over everything lol.
> 
> Don't worry, I promise to bring the snark back next chapter.
> 
> P.S. In case anyone was wondering, the pyromaniac in the story isn't Aerys.


	3. Somebody Else

“Hypothetically,” Lyanna mused as she hung upside down on Arthur’s couch and fiddled with the silver charm bracelet with the tiny dangling wolves that Arthur had purchased for her earlier at a flea market simply because it had reminded him of her. “Where does one go about procuring the best weed in this city?”

Arthur looked up from the book he’d been reading. “Lya, I hate to be the voice of reason but... do I really need to remind you that Jaime and I arrest drug dealers for a living and throw them in jail?”

“We’re talking hypothetical scenarios here, Arthur,” Lyanna reassured him in her most fructose-laden voice. “No need to have a conniption.”

“Thinking of new career options now, are we?” Jaime chimed in from her left. Lyanna didn’t need to look at him to know that he was smirking. “What’s wrong? Is Daddy Dearest’s company not doing so well lately?”

Lyanna rolled her eyes heavenward. “The family business is doing very well, thanks ever so much for asking,” she said. “But that’s not what I was trying to talk about. Stop distracting me. _God_.”

Arthur’s lips quirked into an amused grin. “What were you trying to talk about?”

”Christ, do you really need me to say it again?”

At Arthur’s raised eyebrow, Lyanna sighed. “Oh, fine.” She tilted her head up to better meet Arthur’s eyes from across the room, the tips of her hair reaching the carpet. “Hypothetically, where can I get the best weed in town without getting arrested?”

“Depends on your definition of best,” Jaime replied cheekily.

“I’m talking traveling-to-another-dimension, wasted-until-next-year best.”

“Hmm. Well, in that case, I might know a couple of law enforcement officers who knows where all the confiscated stash of drugs are being kept.” Jaime waggled his eyebrows at her. “Given the right bribe, they might be willing to help.”

“Quit enabling her, Jaime,” Arthur admonished him. 

“What?” Jaime blinked innocently. “This is all just hypothetical, isn’t it?”

“Of course,” Arthur said, his voice daring them all to argue. He turned to Lyanna. “Hypothetically, who will be needing this weed? A chronically ill person with poor pain management meds, I imagine?”

Lyanna didn’t even had the grace to blush. “More like a sister who wants to survive her brother’s boring engagement party without blowing her brains out,” she mumbled.

Jaime’s smirk widened. “Ah, excellent,” he exclaimed. “In that case, allow me to -”

“Jaime,” Arthur said, his voice a quiet warning.

“Fine, fine. No more hypothetical scenarios,” Jaime said with a sigh. The moment Arthur’s attention wandered back to his book though, he nudged Lyanna with his foot and mouthed, “I’ll get you your stash. But you owe me.”

Lyanna nodded happily, not even caring about the consequences of being in debt to Jaime Lannister.

Maybe this friendship thing wasn’t so horrible, after all.

* * *

**Wolfgirl:** you’re all invited to ned’s engagement party on monday 

**Wolfgirl:** and by invited, i mean required

**Wolfgirl:** by me

**Wolfgirl:** upon pain of death

**Lion Boy: **wtf

**Lion Boy:** trust a stark to throw a party on a frickin monday

**Saint Arthur:** Lya, are you sure? We don’t even know your brother 

**Wolfgirl:** plsss i need u

**Lion Boy:** u mean u need my weed

**Saint Arthur:** There will be no weed

**Wolfgirl:** u say that now, but you’ve never met cat’s sister lysa

**Wolfgirl:** lysa will be there

**Wolfgirl:** trust me, we need the weed

**Lion Boy:** see? all the more reason for us not to go to your stupid party 

**Lion Boy:** u can sacrifice enough for the 3 of us, i think

**Wolfgirl:** if u don’t come, a part of your anatomy will be sacrificed

**Lion Boy:** RUDE

**Saint Arthur:** It’s ok. We’ll be there.

**Lion Boy:** what? we will NOT

**Wolfgirl:** have i mentioned, upon pain of death?

**Saint Arthur:** Like I said, we’ll be there

**Lion Boy:** fine. what he said

**Wolfgirl:** great! u guys are the best

**Wolfgirl:** jaime, bring the not-weed

**Saint Arthur: **Nope. No. I forbid it.

**Wolfgirl:** maybe if u say it in a different language i’d understand

**Wolfgirl:** jaime, the not-weed pls

**Lion Boy:** fuck u guys don’t do this to me

**Saint Arthur:** I am scarier than Lya, Jaime. You know this

**Lion Boy:** true

**Lion Boy:** but lya is better at bribery

**Lion Boy:** so idk

**Lion Boy:** you’re both gonna have to convince me

**Wolfgirl:** oh bring it on

**Saint Arthur:** Can I apologize in advance?

**Saint Arthur:** You’re gonna lose this one, Lya. Sorry

**Wolfgirl:** don’t be so sure

**Wolfgirl:** master of bribery, remember?

**Wolfgirl:** see u on monday 

**Wolfgirl:** with the not-weed

* * *

Ned’s engagement party turned out to be every bit as tortuous as Lyanna had imagined it to be. Normally, Lyanna didn’t mind celebrating her brother’s milestones with the rest of the family - god knows Ned deserved it, with the way he worked twice as hard as anyone in the company - but the thought of her having to interact with random acquaintances, distant relatives and, to an extent, complete strangers, was depressing.

Catelyn Tully was a nice girl - the perfect sort of match for Ned, really - and Lyanna got along well with her, when she wasn’t talking about floral arrangements for the wedding and color schemes for the sitting room of their future house, things that Lyanna had no interest in whatsoever. But the Tullys were the traditional sort, with old-fashioned engagement rites that dated back to as long as the 18th century - or so Lyanna thought - so the evening was guaranteed to be a long one.

Lyanna wanted to skip straight to the part where the future bride and groom thanked them all for attending and invited them all to partake in cake and more wine, but as her luck would have it, Lyanna had arrived from her fifth bathroom break only to discover that they were about to be subjected to yet another speech from one of Cat’s ginger-haired relatives, followed by what was sure to be a one-hour video presentation of Ned and Cat’s journey to love or some other such trite nonsense.

She sighed and nudged Benjen on the ribs. “How much longer is this gonna be?” she whined, wishing she was already drunk enough to survive the night.

“You know Ned will kill us if we bail from this party, right?” Benjen said morosely as he further enabled her alcoholic tendencies by handing her another drink.

“That’s why I told you to bring the weed, didn’t I?” Brandon chimed in from her right. “I told you I’d take care of it, but no, you had to insist that my dealer’s stash is subpar, so you volunteered yourself to get us some. And now we don’t even have a single joint to share between the three of us.”

Lyanna huffed irritably at him. “Your dealer’s weed was so bad it gave me a cough that lasted for weeks,” she reminded him. “I honestly thought I was gonna die.”

“It’s not my fault you have weak lungs,” Brandon replied unsympathetically.

“Whatever. Anyway, Jaime said he’d take care of it,” she reassured him, though she knew shit about Jaime’s current whereabouts and whether or not Arthur had forcibly managed to detain him from being an accessory to the Stark siblings’ crime. “He’ll be here.”

Brandon snorted, letting her know just how well he trusted the word of a Lannister. “Oh, yeah? When?” he said. “After the sickeningly sweet video, you do realize the Blackfish is up next for a speech, right?”

Benjen groaned. Lyanna instinctively held out her hand to stop him from banging his head against the table. “I think I’d rather be back at the Wall, digging ice trenches and communing with wildlings. What a waste of a perfectly good leave,” he muttered.

“At least you won’t be around for the bridal shower. _I_ get to be stuck with Lysa for an entire night, not to mention all those bridesmaid dress shopping outings Cat coerced me to agree to,” Lyanna said, her face convulsing at the reminder of her unwanted duties. 

For all that she liked Catelyn, she and her younger sister had never gotten along. There was crazy, and then there was the Lysa Tully kind of crazy. Lyanna shuddered to think of all the future family reunions she would have to attend now that the Tullys were going to be bound to them for all of eternity. Ned didn’t seem like the divorcing type, much to Lyanna’s dismay.

She signaled to one of the waiters for another glass of champagne. Benjen and Brandon, after having checked that their father was, in fact, too busy schmoozing with important guests to pay them much attention, matched her glass for glass. They downed so much liquor the waiter ended up giving them the entire bottle to save himself the effort of constantly going back to their table. In no time at all, the room started spinning.

Above the din of voices, one of them an equally inebriated Benjen who had taken to conversing in a language that Lyanna was pretty sure he’d made up, she heard, as though from far away, someone calling her name.

She spun around so quickly in her seat that she almost fell over, but was saved from doing so when a pair of arms encircled her waist with surprising gentleness, and the familiar scent of mint and green apples assaulted her senses.

She looked up and saw herself reflected in Arthur Dayne’s bright eyes. “Arthur!” she exclaimed, happily throwing her hands around his neck and leaning against him. “You came.”

“Oh no, you’re drunk,” Arthur murmured, smiling that lopsided smile he especially reserved just for her and Jaime.

“Hello to you too. So kind of you to acknowledge my presence,” Jaime drawled sarcastically. For a moment, Lyanna saw the outline of two blonds, before the vision coalesced into the image of Jaime dressed in a white tux that complemented his golden hair well. Arthur was dressed in a similar tux, but whereas Jaime was light personified, he was dark, the sharp lines of his suit completely at odds with the soft look in his violet eyes. The sight of them standing there, twin smiles directed at her, took her breath away. Or perhaps that was the champagne talking.

“Jaime Lannister,” Brandon greeted them, marginally less drunk than the rest of his siblings. “And the famous Arthur Dayne, yes? I didn’t know you and my sister were close friends.”

“Lya never talks to you about us?” Jaime gasped, looking thoroughly insulted.

“Oh, she does. But sometimes when Lya says things, she exaggerates. She was always the drama queen of the family, you see.”

“Debatable.” Jaime flicked an amused glance at Brandon, who shrugged and neither denied nor confirmed the implication.

“I assure you. We value our relationship with Lyanna too much to deny it,” Arthur said, his voice as smooth as polished wood. 

Brandon cocked his head at that, like a bloodhound scenting prey from miles away. Lyanna could almost see the gears in his brain turning the moment he heard the word “relationship”.

“Ugh, you guys are boring me. Are you done posturing and speaking like whiny assholes?” Lyanna said in an effort to distract them. The last thing she, or anyone needs, is a curious Brandon. 

She hopped out of her seat and hooked her arms through theirs, Jaime to her left and Arthur to her right. With a deranged sort of cheeriness, she declared, “Let’s go out for a walk.”

Benjen looked up from his half-empty glass of wine and muttered something unintelligible. 

She patted him on the head the way one might pet a wayward puppy and assured him, “Don’t worry, we’ll come back just in time for Ned and Cat’s farewell speech. I promise.” She drunkenly kissed him on the forehead and left him to his drink.

As for Brandon, she jerked her head towards Benjen and wordlessly let him know that it was his turn to babysit their brother now. There, that ought to keep him occupied for a while.

Once outside the stuffy ballroom, she broke into a run, the sharp staccato of her heels echoing loudly against the marble floors, the two men behind her struggling to keep up. She stopped at the entrance of the glass gardens, her thoughts on superior weed and overflowing alcohol long forgotten.

“Jesus, Lya,” Jaime panted, hands on his knees. “You made us come all the way here just to make us run after you? My suit is custom-made, you know. I haven’t even had the chance to show it off properly. You owe me a dance.”

“Ask Arthur, then, if you want,” Lyanna said flippantly as she weaved her way through the maze of rose bushes and hydrangeas until she reached the center of the garden. 

“No,” Jaime replied obstinately. “Together, Arthur and I would outshine every couple on the dance floor and your brother and his fiancée would end up hating us. Not that I care, especially, but today, I’m in the mood to give the plebeians the spotlight.”

Lyanna snorted, imagining the look on pretty Catelyn Tully’s face if she heard Jaime calling her a plebeian. “Did you bring the weed?” she asked, changing the subject.

Arthur gave her a stern look. To Lyanna’s champagne-addled mind, it only made him more appealing and brought to mind images of Arthur playacting and fulfilling some of her darkest, secret fantasies. She shook her head forcibly to rid herself of such impure thoughts, an act that caused both men to laugh out loud. 

“I swear to God, Lya, if I see you smoking weed, I will _arrest _you,” Arthur told her firmly. “We’re here for moral support, and moral support only.”

By the pointed looks Jaime was sending her, she had no doubt that of the two of them, he at least had come prepared, but not wanting to risk angering and alienating Arthur, she sighed and resigned herself to being an upstanding model citizen, at least for the time being. What she might do on another night, Arthur need not know.

“Fine,” she relented with a smile. “Let’s just fucking drink then. God forbid we do something fun tonight.” Pulling out a flask from the hidden folds of her gown - her sole concession to being forced to wear something as horrid as orange taffeta, as per Cat’s wishes, was _pockets_ \- she took a long drink and handed it to Jaime with a wink.

“Cheers.” Jaime grinned and nudged Arthur. “Your turn, Art.”

Feeling both pairs of eyes on him, Arthur unflinchingly lifted the flask to his lips. At Lyanna’s open-mouthed stare, he shrugged defensively and said, “What? I said I’d show moral support.”

An unbridled laugh forced its way out of her throat. Lyanna threw herself at him and happily slurred, “You’re the best friend a girl could ever ask for, Arthur Dayne.” 

They landed on the ground, the hard steel of his chest cushioning her fall. Lyanna rolled over to the side, her head on his shoulder, and tugged on Jaime’s ankle, sending him unceremoniously toppling to the floor to her other side. The three of them stared at the domed ceiling, unwilling to get up.

“Great. Now my tux is ruined,” Jaime complained. 

“I’ll buy you a new one,” Lyanna replied blithely.

“Yes, and while you’re at it, buy yourself something new too. Honestly, that dress is hideous. I assume you were forced to wear this against your will?” At Lyanna’s nod, he sniggered. “What, does your brother’s fiancée hate you that much? You never did have much luck with female friends. Tully looks alright, I guess, but she must have been desperate to stop you from outshining her tonight.”

Lyanna’s heart skipped a beat. Somewhere buried deep within that barbed comment was a compliment, she was sure of it. “You think I can outshine Cat?” she asked him beneath lowered lashes. “But she’s very pretty.”

“In case you haven’t noticed, Lya, so are you,” Arthur whispered, his breath ghosting the exposed column of her neck.

Lyanna laughed in an effort to hide the telltale quiver of her jaw. Why did it suddenly become hard to breathe? “Thanks for the moral support,” she said instead.

“Anytime.”

They took turns tipping the warm liquor down their throats and sharing weird anecdotes about their day, only stopping when Lyanna calmly announced that she was about to throw up. Jaime scrambled away from her in comical haste while Arthur held her hair and soothed her back, ready to help in a moment’s notice. With a giggle, she pulled them back down to the ground and told them she was only joking.

Jaime drained the rest of the smuggled alcohol in one gulp and threw the empty flask behind one of the rose bushes, much to Lyanna’s annoyance. He murmured a string of insults - his favorite ones being _demoness_ and _wolf bitch_ \- but Lyanna slapped him on the chest and twined her fingers through his, effectively shutting him up. Arthur, for his part, reminded Jaime to drop twenty dollars into the Snark Jar at his earliest convenience, and when Lyanna felt in danger of starting another argument again, her ruby-stained lips forming the first syllables of her chosen word of insult, he immediately shut her up by threatening, in his usual placid tone devoid of snark or ill intent, to call Rhaegar on speed dial so that he could talk to her.

Lyanna gulped and locked eyes with Jaime. “Fuck, Arthur. I think I finally know why all the criminals are scared of you,” she said, her voice wobbly.

Arthur laughed entirely without abandon. The warmth of it spread all throughout her chest, and she thought she’d never heard a lovelier sound in her life before.

* * *

One Thursday night, she bumped into Arthur and Jaime at the supermarket that marked the halfway point to their apartments. She was shopping for condoms when she caught a glimpse of them in the cereal aisle, arguing over the appropriate ratio of Cheerios to Frosted Flakes.

Arthur saw her first.

“Lya?” He called out, brow furrowing as he struggled to remember why she was there. “What are you doing here?”

They’d invited her over to go grocery shopping with them earlier, she recalled, and then they’d tried to bribe her by promising to take her to that fifties style diner they knew she liked. But Lyanna had begged off for one night and told them that she’d already had plans. It was true. Sort of.

She fought off the urge to cancel everything so she could hang out with Arthur and Jaime the way she'd been doing for the past couple of weeks, but the thought of preserving at least a modicum of her pride and dignity stayed her hand. The problem was, she liked spending time with her boys, especially now that she and Jaime were finally starting to become best friends. But she liked it too much. And sometimes, it made it hard for her to remember that she’d been third wheeling them for the entire time that they’d been dating, so much so that she’d started to notice a pattern with regards to her dating life. Or lack thereof.

Her Northside friends, the Mormont girls being the most vocal of the lot, had all volunteered to be her wingman in an effort to get her post-Rhaegar life back on track. But in between whinging at Arthur’s apartment and accompanying them to various outings, she hadn’t had the time. It didn’t help that she kept comparing every guy who made a move on her to the two prized idiots she kept visiting in her spare time. 

In the end, she had to acknowledge the fact that Arthur and Jaime had forever ruined other men for her.

“You ditched us so you could go condom shopping? What the fuck?” Jaime exclaimed incredulously, eyes zeroing in on the cherry scented box of condoms Lyanna had been considering buying minutes ago.

“Err…” Lyanna discreetly looked around the store for a hole large enough for her to hide in. She should’ve known better than to go to _this_ particular grocery store.

Arthur pursed his lips in displeasure. It was a look that Lyanna had not often seen directed at her. Was he really that upset that she’d bailed on them just this once? The thought was inconceivable.

“Are you on your way to a date?” He eventually figured out, his eyes scanning her outfit from head to toe. She was wearing dark skinny jeans and a flirty top that made her boobs look bigger, paired with her favorite pair of high toed combat boots. And she was wearing her red “fuck me” lipstick. She hadn’t worn that since her last date with Rhaegar. The implication wasn’t lost on Arthur.

Lyanna resisted the urge to blush. Every time Arthur scrutinized her in what she most definitely misinterpreted as an intimate way brought back memories of her thirteen-year-old awkward self. Before she’d grown into the confident, brave woman that she was, she’d been that girl.

“Who’s the fool stupid enough to go out with you?” 

Without her knowing it, Lyanna found herself pressed against the rows of cereal boxes, the hard shelves digging into her back. And then Jaime was suddenly there, well past her personal bubble of space, his furious face inches from her own, arms bracketed on either side of her hips.

For several moments, she froze, her heart drumming harshly against her ribcage. Then she drew herself to her full height, gave him her best glare, and pushed past him, only to barrel straight into Arthur’s arms.

His grip on her waist as he prevented her from stumbling to the floor was tight. Lyanna’s stomach quivered. She’d never known Arthur to be less than gentle with his touches before.

“No one you’d know.” Lyanna shook herself free from Arthur’s helping hands and stood a safe distance from them. Close proximity to those two always resulted in her making bad decisions.

Jaime scowled. “Who?” he pressed her.

Lyanna rolled her eyes. “Dom,” she finally conceded with an irritated sigh.

“Dom? As in Domeric?” Arthur’s eyes were wide. “Domeric Bolton?”

Suddenly, Lyanna became all too aware of how her night might end. There were several possible outcomes. One, Jaime and Arthur would go all protective cavemen shit on her and pester her until she gave in and cancelled her night out. Two, she’d argue with both of them till they all turned blue in the face, and then she’d be late, Dom would lose his reservation at that nice restaurant he’d picked out for her, and they’d be too mad and sour to fuck each other into oblivion. Three, her two well-meaning friends would let her go, but then they’d secretly tail her all the way until her date ended, and if Lyanna was unlucky enough, they’d soon add Lyanna’s foreplay kinks and favorite sexual positions to the list of things they didn’t want to know but will end up knowing about her anyway. There was also an option four, and that one sounded the most promising, so she went with that.

She gave both men a scathing look. “I’m going to walk away now and pretend I didn’t catch both of you acting like idiots.”

“But -”

“You will behave yourselves,” Lyanna continued, despite the disbelieving looks Jaime and Arthur were sending her.

“But that Bolton is a right bastard. Weren’t there rumors that he’d spent time in juvie -”

“No, that’s not true at all,” Lyanna denied prissily. “I happen to think that Dom is a sensitive, misunderstood soul -”

“- and they say he has weird kinks, like fucking knife play or something -”

“- who has been patiently waiting for me for minutes now, so if you’ll excuse me,” she glared at Jaime as though daring him to say one more word, “I have to go.”

This time, it was Arthur whispering in her ear. “Lya, c’mon. Don’t be like that -”

Lyanna shrugged off the hand on her shoulder and fixed Arthur with a look. “Don’t follow me,” she said. “If I catch either of you spying on me, you’ll regret it.”

“But -”

Lyanna’s eyes narrowed into slits. “I mean it.” 

Both men sighed.

“Fine,” Jaime said with a pout.

“Be safe. Call us if something bad happens and you need us to come pick you up,” Arthur told her, looking like he very much wanted something bad to happen so they could come pick her up.

“Sure I will. But I won’t need to. Bye.” 

Lyanna rushed out of Aisle 8 before either man could have a chance to change her mind. 

If she’d looked down and seen the contents of their shopping cart - eggs, cereal, and an assortment of snacks that neither Jaime nor Arthur cared much for but that they knew Lyanna liked - perhaps then, she would’ve _understood_.

But she was running late enough as it is, her thoughts about the outcome of tonight’s date playing on a constant loop over her head, so she’d failed to notice this significant little detail. Pity.

* * *

“You know,” Jaime said in between bites of his banana chocolate chip muffin, courtesy of Lyanna’s morning run to the charming bakery across the street, “I hate to say I told you so, but… _I told you so_.”

Lyanna slurped loudly from her straw, knowing it would start Jaime on another rant about her total lack of table manners. “Oh, shut up,” she muttered. “Arthur already told me off, like, a dozen times while you were in the shower. Don’t you start on me too.”

“I would be happy to tell you off again, if you want,” Arthur volunteered, handing her half of his bagel without much prodding.

Jaime snickered at the annoyed look that crossed Lyanna’s face. “What was it you told us about Bolton? A sensitive, misunderstood soul?”

“Hard to believe that from someone whose hobbies include starting illegal dog fights,” Arthur remarked blandly, as though Lyanna’s idiocy hadn’t been made clear enough already. “I can’t believe he actually thought you’d find something like that thrilling. And it was only your second date, wasn’t it?”

Jaime nudged her affectionately on the shoulder. “Cheer up,” he said. “At least now you can finally say you’ve dated someone who’s in prison. You know, if you’re really into the kind of men your parents warned you about.”

“I think from now on, it would probably be best if we did a background check on all the guys you’d like to date in the future,” Arthur suggested to her, though the way he’d said it, it felt less like a suggestion and more of a decision he’d already talked himself - and Jaime - into making.

Lyanna groaned out loud. And here she thought her father and brothers had been bad. “I’d like very much to fight you on this, but knowing you two stubborn idiots, what would even be the point?” she mumbled. “Fine then. You can start by doing your weird FBI mumbo jumbo shit on Obi.”

A piece of muffin fell from Jaime’s mouth. “Obi?” he screamed. “You’re dating Oberyn _Martell_ now?”

Lyanna shrugged. “Dating really isn’t the term I’d use, but yeah,” she said. “We’ve went out a couple of times.”

“Define ‘a couple of times’.” Arthur had his “scary cop face” on. “Lya, you could _not_ possibly do worse than Oberyn Martell.” 

“He’s really not that bad,” Lyanna protested, thoroughly enjoying the stupefied look on her friends’ faces. “He’s insanely good at cards, has no problems with me being the Dom, unlike _Dom_ who, you know -” She stopped for a moment in an effort to appreciate her own joke. “-Get it?”

Arthur and Jaime were not amused. They both turned so pale that Lyanna found herself reviewing through the correct sequence of events for emergency CPR just in case. 

“Lya-”

“For the love of all that is good and holy in this world, please -”

“-have you lost your fucking mind-”

“-please tell me you’re joking-”

“- he already has daughters, haven’t you heard? Daughters, as in plural -”

Lyanna rolled her eyes. “Jesus Christ,” she cursed. “I’m never gonna get ahead in life with you two harping on about my every move, am I?” 

Arthur laid both hands on her shoulders, his face as grave as the day he’d told her he hadn’t know about Rhaegar cheating on her. “Listen, Lya. I know you don’t want to hear this from me, but -”

“Arthur, no. Stop it,” Lyanna interrupted him, batting his hands away. “I’m not marrying the guy, okay? You don’t need to be so dramatic.”

Arthur’s gaze darkened. “You better not. Marry him, that is. Because if you do,” he said, “I am officially revoking my best friend status.”

Lyanna gasped. “You wouldn’t.”

“I would,” Arthur said, and though Lyanna knew he was only joking, his next words were anything but. “I grew up with the Martells, Lya. I know Oberyn. He’s an honorable man and he does what he thinks is right. But… he’s also dangerous. He isn’t _good_ for you.”

Lyanna had never thought of Arthur as someone who was heavily invested in her dating life. But then again, considering the fact that she’d roped him into becoming her personal relationship counselor from the very first day that she’d met him, she probably shouldn’t be surprised. If anyone had earned the right to comment on her poor choices when it came to men, it was Arthur.

She felt conflicted. On one hand, she was furious that they felt confident they could tell her what to do. Had they not learned by now that she did not take kindly to following orders, much less ones that were ridiculous and were seemingly based on nothing but testosterone and overbearing protectiveness? On the other hand, she was touched that they seemed to be concerned enough - jealous, even - about the way she was spending her time when she wasn’t with them. It made her feel wanted. And she liked feeling wanted, especially if it were Arthur and Jaime doing the wanting.

In the end, her feelings of anger won out. “You’re not my father,” she growled. “You can’t tell me what to do.”

_I can’t have either of you, so you could at least allow me the courtesy of trying to move on,_ a traitorous part of Lyanna thought.

“Lya, please. Be reasonable -”

“No,” Lyanna interrupted him, straightening her spine and jutting her chin out. “I’ll date whoever I please.”

Jaime cursed loudly and pressed a hand to his face. “And may God save us all.”

* * *

A week after Valentine’s Day, she finally caved and broke up with Oberyn. It wasn’t a big deal - both of them agreed that the sex was great, but that they were probably better off as friends - but from the joy and relief that swept through Arthur and Jaime’s faces, one would think Christmas had come early.

They treated her to her favorite restaurant that night, and there were celebratory champagne, cake, and platters upon platters of fresh lobster and baked oysters. Lyanna couldn’t remember a time when she’d been this spoiled. Maybe she should make a habit of breaking up with guys more often.

“I don’t know why you guys are celebrating,” she said with a pout. “You’ve basically ruined my chances of getting laid for, like, _forever_.”

Jaime shrugged. “Whatever. You’ll live.”

“You can’t get laid,” Arthur told her. How he managed to say that with a serious face was beyond her. “At least, not until we make sure that the guy you’re seeing isn’t a drug dealer or a gambler with a knife play fetish.”

“Wow, your commitment to protecting my virtue is commendable,” Lyanna said dryly. “You should join a club with my brothers. They’ll make you honorary vice president.”

“If Arthur’s the vice president, does that mean I get to be president?” Jaime said with a suggestive wiggle of his eyebrows.

“God, you’re incorrigible.”

“Yes, and you love me for it.”

Love was such a strong word, but it was close enough. Lyanna dodged the bullet in his words and feigned annoyance. “No. What part of ‘no’ do you not understand?”

“Denial doesn’t look good on you, Lya.”

On the contrary, denial and Lyanna were friends. Not that she’d ever tell Jaime that, of course.

* * *

Lyanna was halfway to their usual table in the corner when she heard them arguing.

Instinctively, she hid behind the nearest alcove, well within hearing range, and listened.

“- I can’t do this anymore… need to do something -“

“Jaime, think… no guarantee… what if we’ve got it all wrong…”

“… I am not wrong… _trust_ me… it’ll be alright…”

“… this will change everything… can’t afford to risk losing…”

“… fuck… need you to stop being so fucking scared…”

Lyanna inched closer to the wall, wishing she could hear more and actually understand what they were talking about. Whatever it was must be serious. She had never seen Arthur and Jaime arguing like this before.

Their row escalated. Mentally, she cursed whoever had designed this coffee shop for failing to take into account adequate hiding spots. 

But there was a limit to how long Lyanna could claim to stay in the restroom before Arthur and Jaime, argument or not, started looking for her. So she pinched her lips, sighed, and strode back to their table.

Predictably, her arrival was followed by silence.

“Something wrong?” she asked dryly, eyes sweeping over the angry flush to Jaime’s cheeks and the stiff way Arthur was holding his coffee cup.

“No. It’s nothing,” Arthur said, meeting Jaime’s eyes across the table.

Jaime’s gaze hardened, and he looked away. “Yes. Arthur was just telling me about a case he was working on. I… overreacted.”

Lyanna glanced at the two of them. She wouldn’t get anything more out of them, she could tell. So she abandoned her questions and launched into a rant about Ned and Cat’s upcoming rehearsal dinner and Lysa Tully’s campaign for poufy dresses for the bridesmaids, and just like that, their argument was forgotten.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Three guesses as to what our lovely couple are arguing about. Though I have no doubt that most of you will get it on the first try. I am nothing if not predictable lol.
> 
> I told myself I'd be updating this thing weekly, but somehow I got sidetracked by real life, hence the late update. Sorry. But on the bright side, we only have two more chapters left. Are you excited? I'm excited! :)


	4. Is There Somebody That Can Watch You

She was laughing at some silly anecdote Robert was telling her while simultaneously rearranging her list of reasons for wanting to date him (_Pros: Fit as fuck, probably a good kisser; Cons: Looks like the jealous type, has had sex with half the girls in Westeros) _when she felt a hand on her shoulder.

“Hello. Sorry for the intrusion,” a contrite-looking Arthur said. But Lyanna knew him well enough by now to know that he did _not_, in fact, feel sorry for the intrusion. “Can we borrow Lya for a moment?”

Robert looked miffed at the interruption, especially seeing as it came in the form of two remarkably handsome and well-dressed men who looked at his date with unabashed familiarity. He cast a dubious look at the pair of them and turned to Lyanna. “Friends of yours, babe?”

“Yeah,” Lyanna replied, glancing suspiciously at the crocodile grin Jaime was sporting and the too-innocent glint in Arthur’s eyes. “I’ll find you later, alright?”

Robert planted a loud smack on her cheek. “I’ll be by the open bar," he promised her. Then, with one final disappointed sigh, he walked away.

“_Babe_?” Jaime mimed gagging. “Seriously, Lya?” 

“A fair warning would be nice,” Arthur told her, looking none-too-happy about Lyanna’s latest lapse in judgment. “How long have you been seeing this one now? We haven’t had time yet to do another background check.”

Lyanna rolled her eyes. “You can’t blame me if you guys didn’t tell me you were coming here,” she pointed out. “Robbie and I aren’t dating yet, and if you keep it up with the whole stalking bit, we may never will.”

“Good.” Jaime looked so smug Lyanna wanted to punch him.

She groaned. “Is this revenge for me cockblocking you that one time?”

Jaime snorted. “Hardly.”

“Then _what,” _Lyanna punctuated her each word with a slap to Jaime’s chest, “are you two doing here? Not that I don’t appreciate the company - really, I do - but you can’t keep doing this! You’re honest-to-god killing my sex life.”

Jaime’s nose wrinkled. “Still going on about that, are you?” 

He traded sideway glances with Arthur. Lyanna wished, for the life of her, that she could understand whatever it was that they were silently communicating with each other. She usually prided herself on being able to read them, but maybe this was a couple thing. Maybe there were just some things she couldn’t be privy to. Besides, it wasn’t as though they were talking about her, so maybe she could just let it go. For now.

* * *

During the days that followed, something strange occurred. She could not pinpoint exactly what it was or when it started, but all of a sudden, Arthur and Jaime were _everywhere_. 

It shouldn’t have been a strange thing, considering how close the three of them had gotten, but Lyanna was used to being the clingy one. She bullied them into going out with her and imposed her presence upon them within the privacy of Arthur’s home, and being a rather affectionate person, she wasn’t sparing with her touches. It was all a part of the “best friend” package. 

So when the two of them suddenly turned the tables on her and started reciprocating, she didn’t know what to make of it. Jaime, she could understand. He was like a proud lion who snarled at everyone except for those he deemed worthy enough, and ever since they’d become friends - truly friends - he’d shown her the same level of affection he’d shown Arthur, minus the kissing.

Arthur was different. He wasn’t a touchy-feely person, and he showed his affection in odd ways - by making sure there was a bottle of painkillers for Jaime the morning after a hard night of drinking or by saving the last slice of apple pie for Lyanna even though they all knew it was the one dessert he loved above all others. But lately, he seemed to be touching her more than usual - a kiss on the forehead here, a hand brushing the nape of her neck there - and it was driving her insane. 

And that was before they started invading her lunch hours.

Lyanna was used to keeping odd hours at her office - one of the many perks of being Rickard Stark’s daughter - and often, she could get away with doing most of her work at home. But on the days when her presence was needed at her father’s building, she ate lunch with one of her brothers, whichever one of them was available at that time. Considering how much Brandon loathed anything that had to do with Stark Enterprises, it was often Ned who was subjected to Lyanna’s experimentations on Dornish cuisine and Asshai street food.

So when she saw a familiar mop of blond hair lounging about in the lobby at a quarter past twelve, she was more than a little surprised.

“Jaime?” She blinked twice to dispel the image of him standing there like the carefree bastard that he was, but to her annoyance, the image remained. “What the hell are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be at work?”

Jaime gasped in mock-outrage. “Are you implying that the FBI is barbaric enough not to grant us lunch breaks? Why, I’ll have you know -”

Lyanna peeled him off the concierge’s desk by the scruff of his collar before he could say something obnoxious enough to have him banned from the premises. “Seriously,” she said when they were a safe distance away from her traumatized-looking secretary. “What are you doing here? Is it Arthur? Has something happened to him or something?”

“Has anyone mentioned how much of a pessimist you are?” Jaime commented with a smirk. “Relax, Arthur’s fine. I’m just here to take you out to lunch.”

Lyanna looked suspiciously at him. “Why?”

“Um, duh. Because Arthur’s following up on a case and I’m bored? Also, we haven’t seen you since Saturday,” Jaime pointed out, as though Lyanna’s recent relationship status with Robert was a terrible inconvenience to him. “Isn’t there, like, a great pasta place nearby? C’mon. I’m starving.”

Lyanna gaped at him. “Jaime - what the _hell_ -”

Jaime hooked his arm around her waist and dragged her outside. Lyanna had to smile encouragingly at the doorman to let him know that she wasn’t being held against her will. “Your treat, of course,” he said imperiously, as if she needed reminding.

She got her revenge by sneakily ordering the spiciest thing on the menu. Jaime, who was perhaps the most sensitive man child she had ever had the pleasure of knowing, promptly broke out into hives. Needless to say, it was a sweet, _sweet _moment for her, right up there with that time she managed to publicly humiliate old Walder Frey at last week's business summit. So of course, she took pictures.

* * *

_Wolfgirl changed the group chat photo_

**Lion Boy**: jfc lya

**Lion Boy:** im gonna kill you

**Wolfgirl:** no you won’t

**Wolfgirl:** if you do arthur will avenge me

**Saint Arthur:** Hey, don’t drag me into this

**Lion Boy:** seriously lya wtf

**Lion Boy: **can u not see how fucking hideous my face looks in that photo

**Wolfgirl: **actually i can

**Wolfgirl:** why do u think i posted it

**Lion Boy:** UGHHHHH

**Saint Arthur:** Do I even want to know what this is about

**Wolfgirl:** you’re better off not knowing. trust me 

**Lion Boy:** my eyelids are so puffy

**Lion Boy:** how dare you take a picture of me looking like that

**Lion Boy:** you’ll regret this, stark

_Lion Boy changed the group chat photo_

**Saint Arthur:** I shouldn’t be laughing at this, but

**Saint Arthur:** A photo of Rhaegar, Jaime? Really?

**Wolfgirl:** I FUCKING HATE U, LANNISTER

**Lion Boy:** Jaime: 1, Lya: 0

* * *

Five days later, it was Arthur who sought her out. He was conversing amiably with the receptionist, and judging by the faint, star struck look on the poor girl’s face, he seemed to be having none of the problems Jaime had encountered his first time around.

“Let me guess,” Lyanna said when she reached him. “You’re bored and you want me to treat you to lunch?”

Arthur’s face twisted in amusement. “Is that what Jaime told you the other day? No wonder he got those rashes,” he said, fighting back a laugh. “Well, I’m smarter than he is. I _insist_ on treating you to lunch.”

Lyanna grinned. “Good. And while you’re at it, will you tell me what the fuck is going on with you two? Why are you suddenly pestering me at work?”

Arthur did that thing where he stared right back at her in a way that made Lyanna feel as though he was trying his hardest to shield his thoughts away from her. All in all, it was a very suspicious look. “Oh, it’s nothing,” he murmured with a shrug. “Our current assignment brought us closer to the area, so we decided to take turns visiting you. Seeing as you bailed on us last night.”

Lyanna rolled her eyes at the mildly accusatory look Arthur leveled at her. It was no secret that he disliked the Baratheon boy, and that was before he even discovered the fact that Lyanna dating Robbie meant less time spent with him and Jaime. “Oh, c’mon. You too?” she grumbled. “Were you and Jaime born with the express purpose of making my life miserable by trying to keep me celibate?”

Arthur laughed drily. “Believe me, that is the last thing Jaime and I are trying to accomplish.”

Lyanna’s eyes narrowed. “What's that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing.”

And so it went. By the sixth time they’d managed to drag her off to lunch, there was already a running bet at the office as to which one of Lyanna’s gentleman callers she was secretly having sex with. Had she not been frustrated with her best friends’ persistence in sabotaging her own dating life, she would have taken the time to laugh at the absurd rumors circulating around them.

Couldn’t they see that the very reason she was dating Robert was precisely because she couldn’t have sex with, let alone date, either one of them?

Hopeless idiots, the both of them. But better that they remain ignorant than for them to realize the non-platonic feelings Lyanna had been secretly harboring for them for the past few months. It was better that way, she decided.

* * *

“I think I’m still waiting for the part where you’ll arrest me for doing this,” Lyanna mumbled as she lit her perfectly rolled joint and took a drag. “How many rules are you breaking now, do you think?”

“Eh. Rules are overrated.” Jaime shrugged nonchalantly. He shifted from his position on the floor of Lyanna’s balcony and surveyed her through the haze of smoke and late afternoon sunlight. They were both pleasantly buzzed already. Lyanna knew this because there was no conceivable way that Jaime would deign to lower himself to the floor in nothing but a distractingly nice pair of jeans, the cold uneven tiles digging against his back, if he weren’t under the influence of quality weed. Weed that, Lyanna reminded him with a laugh, he’d procured from confiscated evidence from his own precinct, and which they were now happily trying to get rid of. Thank god Lyanna lived next to an empty townhouse.

“You sure Arthur isn’t coming tonight?” Lyanna asked him. The last thing they both needed was for Arthur to have a convulsion at the sight of them being complete degenerates and useless members of society. 

“Yes, I’m sure,” Jaime drawled. “He’s meeting his sister for dinner. What about your precious Robbie? He won’t drop by here unannounced, will he?”

“Robbie and I broke up.” At Jaime’s loudly muttered expletive, Lyanna coquettishly batted her lashes at him and added, “What? Didn’t I tell you that?”

“No, you most certainly did not,” Jaime exclaimed, torn between looking offended and incredibly pleased. “If I’d known, I’ve have brought cake to celebrate. Hell, maybe Arthur would’ve bailed on Ashara.”

“And risk Ashara’s wrath? No way.” Lyanna raised her cigarette in the air. “Besides, we have celebratory weed. Don’t worry about it.” She struck her stick against Jaime’s and, with a jaunty wave of her hand, said, “Cheers!”

Jaime stared at her with half-lidded eyes. “So, why’d you break up with _Barf_atheon?” he asked her.

“He got some girl pregnant at the Eyrie. Not while we were dating, mind you, but still.” Lyanna made a face. “I don’t know what that says about Robbie’s sperm - like, does he have some kind of mutant sperm or whatever, one that has the capacity to transcend any birth control method on the planet? Because, you know, that kind of thing is actually scary. Sex is great, but, like, pregnancy? Fuck no. I don’t want to risk it.”

Jaime snorted. “If you think it’s the quality of his sperm that’s the problem, you’re fucking delusional,” he said. “It’s the amount of times he dicks around. Guy’s a man slut. Frankly, I’m surprised you haven’t caught an STD by now.” His eyes narrowed. “Or wait, have you?”

“No.” Lyanna protested, appropriately horrified. “And on that note, can we please stop talking about Robbie’s sperm and STDs? Revulsion isn’t a feeling I like to be well-acquainted with, especially when all I want right now is to be high.”

“Fine by me.”

A half hour later though, Jaime pronounced Lyanna high enough to resume a discussion on love, sex, and the fascinating nature of a man’s sperm.

“Isn’t it interesting?” Lyanna exclaimed, eyes manic bright as she propped herself on one elbow next to Jaime, close enough that their pinky fingers were touching. “That there are millions of sperm every time a guy ejaculates and only one of them is needed to make a baby? I mean, wow. We’re talking millions, and only one of them is special enough.”

Jaime threw back his head and laughed. Lyanna’s eyes followed the long column of his throat, mesmerized. She had a sudden urge to suck on his neck and mark the unblemished skin as hers. Faintly, she wondered if Jaime’s weed was special enough to turn her into a vampire. 

“Someone payed attention in health class,” Jaime sang.

“Shut up and let me finish,” Lyanna said, blowing smoke rings in Jaime’s direction for the sole purpose of annoying him.

Normally, it would’ve worked. But Jaime was remarkably addled now, and a Jaime on drugs was a weird amalgamation of mischief, randiness, and persistence. He inched forward to Lyanna and leaned in, close enough that she could count the individual gold flecks in his green eyes. “How can you claim to finish,” he whispered, smiling wickedly, “when we haven’t even started anything yet?”

Lyanna’s pulse fluttered. “Started what?” she said, hating the way her voice sounded so weak. “You mean an argument? Jaime, we always start arguments, and finish them too -”

“I’m not talking about an argument.” Jaime reached out, one thumb tracing the outline of her lips while the other sneakily made its way to the exposed jut of her collarbone.

“What are you talking about then?” Her breath was hot against the rough pad of his thumb. She felt herself teetering on the edge of control. She imagined licking his finger the way one might lap at ambrosia, imagined his eyes darkening with desire as she did so, the way his throat would quiver as he slowly started to come undone. 

But in all her imaginings, she always remembered one thing: Jaime was not hers. No matter how much she tried to pretend otherwise, he would never be hers in the same way that Arthur was also, sadly, not hers.

So when he crossed the infinitesimal distance between them and murmured, “What I want is for us to stop talking”, Lyanna did the only thing she could then.

In the brief moment when Jaime leaned in to kiss her, hands fisted in her hair and his body pressed so tightly against hers it was a wonder he couldn’t hear the quickening of her heartbeat, she panicked and threw her body sideways. Instead of his lips meeting hers, Jaime toppled to the floor, his chin smacking loudly against the tiles. 

“Fucking hell, Lya!” he swore loudly. 

Lyanna, feeling decidedly unsafe for reasons she couldn’t even begin to describe, inched backwards as far as her self-control would allow her. She laughed, a high-pitched sound that didn’t sound remotely like her at all, and said, “Well, if you wanted to kiss the floor, you could have just said so.”

She stood up and brushed the ash from her skirt. “God, this weed is strong,” she exclaimed, not even knowing what she was saying anymore. “I think we’ve had about enough now, don’t you think?”

She didn’t wait for Jaime to reply. She left him on her balcony and prayed to god that he wouldn’t remember this when his high finally came down.

* * *

“Remind me again how I’m supposed to help you by agreeing to go to lunch here?” Lyanna whispered as she smoothed down her black dress and allowed Arthur to lead her to their table, his hand warm against her lower back.

“It’s for a case I’m working on,” Arthur explained softly, drawing back her chair and gesturing for her to sit down. “I’m investigating a lead on a murder case in the Stormlands - dreadful thing, and probably something we shouldn’t discuss right when we’re about to eat - but the man I’m looking for has a habit of eating lunch here at the country club during weekends, and I needed a way to watch him without making it seem like, you know, I’m watching him.”

“And me being here is helpful how?”

“I need a good cover story,” Arthur told her. “A man dining alone is suspicious. But a man on a date with his girlfriend? He’s someone no one would suspect.”

Lyanna raised an eyebrow, intrigued and more than a little pleased at the thought of Arthur calling her his girlfriend, even if it was just for a day. She cursed Jaime for being busy at work, ignored the odd butterflies swooping in her stomach, and said, “But I’m a civilian. Aren’t there rules against involving people like me in these kind of things?”

Arthur shrugged. “Yes, but I’m in charge of this operation. I decide who I want to involve. Don’t worry, if this was something really dangerous, you know I wouldn’t be asking for your help,” he said. “Besides, what my department won’t know won’t hurt them.”

“Why, Mr. Dayne,” Lyanna said with a scandalous smile. “Breaking rules now, are you? Whatever would the rest of the world say?”

Arthur’s mouth twitched slightly. “You and Jaime have been a terrible influence on me, I’m afraid,” he said, amused.

“Yes, but you love us anyway,” Lyanna pointed out.

A serious expression crossed Arthur’s face for a moment. “That, I do.”

The waiter took their orders. Afterwards, Lyanna took that as her cue to talk about her dating prospects, or lack thereof. It was a familiar topic to both of them, what with Arthur being appointed her relationship counselor without his express knowledge, and it wasn’t long before Lyanna found herself breathless with laughter as she listened to Arthur reject each prospective partner she thought of with a straight face. Arthur wasn’t a naturally funny person, but he had a way of listing off a person’s faults so nicely and in such a way that made them sound anything but, and in an odd, twisted way, that made her laugh.

The two of them laughing together was such a comforting thing, an ordinary slice of life she’d gotten used to over these past few months, that it made her forget, for a moment, that they were there to play a role, not chat as the dear friends that they were to each other.

So when Arthur abruptly reached out and grabbed her hand, she stiffened.

“At your six o’clock,” he whispered in response to the unanswered question in her eyes. “That’s my guy.”

Lyanna pretended to take a selfie and caught a glimpse of an ordinary-looking man in a pinstriped suit. Early fifties. Sandy colored hair peppered with gray. He looked harmless.

“Is he the killer, do you think?” she asked him, her voice low.

Arthur shook his head, his thumb drawing circles on the back of her hand in soothing motions. Lyanna’s skin felt on fire. “No. Not him. But he might be able to tell us who did it,” he said.

“So, what? What do we do?”

“Nothing, for now. Today is just for surveillance. Let’s just finish our lunch,” Arthur said simply. By now, he’d flipped her hand over the table. His fingers, slender and callused in a way that Rhaegar's never was, traced the lines of her palm with a delicate precision that made her heart stutter, before stopping at the inside of her wrist. She fought the urge to close her eyes and wondered if he could feel the soft quickening of her pulse, the way it seemed to beat just for him. God, she hoped not.

“Okay,” Lyanna said, perhaps a beat too long.

They made it all the way to dessert without incident. Arthur kept casting furtive glances in her direction. Or perhaps it was directed at the man behind her - to be honest, she really couldn’t tell - though if asked, she’d say she was more inclined to place her bets on the man anyway, given that they were there because of his job. 

Lyanna thought she was doing a rather remarkable job of pretending she was fine, despite the fact that Arthur had never once let go of her hand, until Arthur leaned in without warning, his breath fanning across her cheek.

They remained suspended there for a time, and as the blood rushed to her face, she became acutely aware of the gentle way he was cradling her chin, his eyes burning with an intensity that suggested that he was about five heartbeats away from doing something decidedly un-Arthur-like.

To Lyanna’s surprise and express disappointment, he didn’t kiss her.

Instead, Arthur swiped his fingers across her cheek, his touch feather-light, and whispered to her ear in a voice that sent delicious shivers up her spine, “You had chocolate smeared on your cheek.”

Lyanna, perhaps for the first time in forever, laughed nervously and swallowed. “Uh, thanks,” she stammered, willing her heart rate to go back to normal.

It never did. 

They left the restaurant once Arthur had deemed the mission a success, but even then, her traitorous heart remained stubbornly uncooperative. She thought of Arthur, Jaime, and the two of them together, and felt something within her break.

She hated how jealous she was, hated not knowing which one of them she wanted more, hated that she wouldn’t take one without the other, because an Arthur without Jaime was only two-thirds of what she wanted, and vice versa. But most of all, she hated that for two glorious hours, she’d forgotten that she and Arthur were only pretending. He wasn’t actually hers. The world was a fucked up place, she thought.

The feeling of unfairness lasted all day and all throughout the night. When she finally fell asleep, she dreamed of Arthur kissing her, the way she wanted to be kissed. It was the worst form of torture, like rubbing salt on an open wound, and it was made all the more painful because she knew that it would never, _ever_ happen in real life.

* * *

**Lion Boy: **lya

**Lion Boy: **remember that favor u owed me

**Lion Boy: **for the you-know-what

**Wolfgirl: **yeees?

**Lion Boy: **i’m gonna need to cash it in now

**Wolfgirl: **well shit

**Wolfgirl: **i just got this weird feeling of dread

**Wolfgirl: **but yeah, ok

**Wolfgirl: **what’s the favor?

**Lion Boy: **i need a date to my father’s bday party

**Wolfgirl: **ur father has a bday? like, he was actually born?

**Wolfgirl: **somehow i can’t imagine him as a baby

**Wolfgirl: **i always thought he came into the world fully formed tbh. u know, like one of those greek gods

**Lion Boy: **lol you're probably right

**Wolfgirl: **i always am

**Wolfgirl: **ANYWAY

**Wolfgirl: **as i was saying

**Wolfgirl: **u already have a date

**Wolfgirl: **arthur

**Wolfgirl: **remember him? tall dark and handsome?

**Saint Arthur: **Can’t. I’m going out of town.

**Wolfgirl: **for work?

**Saint Arthur: **Yes

**Wolfgirl: **jfc can’t they just fire you already

**Lion Boy: **he’s also seeing rhaegar afterwards lol

**Lion Boy: **in case u need more reasons to expand your demonic aura

**Wolfgirl: **WHAT

**Wolfgirl: **arthur u TRAITOR

**Saint Arthur: **Despite what you might like to think, Lya, Rhaegar is still my friend

**Wolfgirl: **hmph fine

**Wolfgirl: **but be sure to remind him that he is no longer best friend material

**Saint Arthur: **Noted

**Wolfgirl: **also

**Wolfgirl: **if i go as your proxy to jaime's thing, you’ll owe me. just fyi

**Saint Arthur: **Uh, I’m not sure that’s how it works. You’re supposed to be doing it as a favor to Jaime

**Wolfgirl: **two words. jaime’s. father’s. bday.

**Lion Boy: **that’s 3 words. can’t u count?

**Wolfgirl: **fuck u

**Wolfgirl: **see? 2 words

**Lion Boy: **see u there

**Lion Boy: **3 words!

**Saint Arthur: **I’m so pleased you guys have demonstrated your ability to count

**Wolfgirl: **not. going.

**Wolfgirl: **still 2 words

**Lion Boy: **U. OWE. ME.

**Lion Boy: **3 WORDS

**Wolfgirl: **ugh fine

**Wolfgirl: **but if your father or your sister ends up killing me, i’m clawing my way out of the grave so u can join me in hell

**Lion Boy: **great, save me a seat

* * *

How Lyanna had ever expected to get away with attending a party thrown in Tywin Lannister’s honor without meeting the man himself, she would never know. Perhaps she was being too optimistic, a byproduct of spending too much time with Benjen when he wasn’t away doing manly, heroic things at that army camp he called a second home, but in this case, her expectations fell just a little short.

She’d heard about Tywin Lannister, of course. Anyone who’s ever dabbled in business and politics had heard of him. He was ruthless, cunning, and with that business with the Reynes and Tarbecks several decades ago, he’d made a name for himself as someone who was not to be trifled with. Jaime once said that he wouldn’t wish his father even on his worst enemy and _that, _surely, was saying something. Whoever said money didn’t make the world go round clearly hadn’t heard of Tywin.

So when she suddenly found herself seated at a table surrounded by Jaime’s closest family members, Tywin Lannister among them, the tiniest part of her soul that wasn’t overflowing with bravery, confidence, and self-love quailed at the thought of being forced to make small talk with such a man.

Before Jaime’s father had suddenly deigned to grace their party with his presence, Lyanna had been in deep conversation with Jaime’s brother, a remarkable young man who was the complete opposite of Jaime in every way. He was smart, frighteningly so, and kept up a steady stream of chatter while constantly making sure that her wine glass was refilled. With the way Jaime’s twin was glaring at her from across the table, she considered it a small kindness.

She didn’t know what she’d done to earn the displeasure of Cersei Lannister, mortal goddess or, as Tyrion playfully whispered in her ear, “the origin of evil trapped in human form”, but she was fairly certain that whatever it was, it had something to do with Jaime. Most things usually did. From what little she’d gleamed from Arthur and Jaime himself, Cersei fancied herself the female version of Tywin and took offense to anyone who wasn’t a Lannister, the exception being Tyrion, whom she’d hated and had once tried to drown when he was a baby. When she’d heard that particular bit of information, she’d felt sure that Jaime was exaggerating, but upon seeing the exact expression of disdain on Cersei’s face at the sight of her, she felt the sudden urge to retract her opinion.

All this, of course, brought her back to the issue at hand, which was, namely, the fact that she was now in an all-new circle of Hell not entirely of her own making.

Case in point: Tywin Lannister turning to her with cold, calculating eyes over the rim of his wine glass, thin lips pursed.

“Jaime,” he said, his son’s name a command that cut through the chatter at the table and silenced everyone, even Cersei. “Introduce me to your companion.”

Lyanna’s nails sharpened into claws, the points digging into Jaime’s thigh beneath the table.

She was going to _kill_ Jaime before the night was over, or die trying.

Jaime gave his father a close-lipped smile. “This is Lyanna Stark, Father,” he said, gesturing towards Lyanna as though he couldn’t give two flying fucks what his father thought of her.

A valiant effort, and one Lyanna would have publicly lauded him for, if it weren’t for the cold-blooded twist to Tywin’s mouth at the mention of her surname. “Stark?” he said softly, the expression on his face giving nothing away. “Tell me, Miss Stark. How goes Stark Enterprises?”

After a moment of hesitation, Lyanna launched into a report of everything they’ve accomplished so far this month, including details of her new pet project, a wide scale proposal to convert several hundred acres of unused land in Wintertown into new residential homes for the middle-class families who usually couldn’t afford the housing development plans Brandon was currently in charge of.

“If I had wanted to know such tedious details, I would have asked my secretary for a report.”

A lesser woman would have flinched at the sting of Tywin’s words. Luckily for Lyanna, she was raised in a wolf’s den and could not be easily scared away. “True,” she conceded, willing herself to remain perfectly still and poised. “But if you really don't want to know such details, Mr. Lannister, why don't you just go straight to the point and ask me whatever it is you want to ask me? It would save us some time, don’t you think?”

This time, it was Jaime’s hand squeezing her thigh, away from his father’s prying eyes. 

“What are your plans for the future?” Tywin asked her, opting to take the direct route, as she so graciously suggested to him. “You’ll be inheriting your father’s company together with your brothers, will you not? Equal shares, perhaps? Is that all you hope to accomplish, then? To help ensure your father’s legacy?”

Lyanna straightened in her seat. This, she could talk about all day. “I’m the fourth and youngest Stark at the company, Mr. Lannister. I’m aware of that more than ever,” she said. “I love the business we’re running, but someday, I hope to be more than just my father’s helping hand. And I rather like the idea of building something up from scratch. You know. Business empires and the like. I suspect I’ll find something else to occupy my time soon enough.”

That, apparently, was enough for Jaime's father. He gave her what Tyrion would later inform her was the patented Tywin Lannister nod of approval, merely said, “Jaime, bring her next time”, sucking all the air in the room as he did so, and proceeded to rise from the table, presumably to mingle with all the other guests he had been previously neglecting.

Predictably, this gave Jaime’s twin another legitimate reason to hate her, and before Jaime or anyone else could stop her, she, too, left the room in a trail of designer perfume and four-inch heels. If Lyanna hadn’t been so sure that Cersei would stab her if given the chance, she would’ve followed out after her.

She stared at Jaime, who didn’t even have the grace to look guilty. “What the _fuck _just happened?” she hissed, feeling as though she'd just managed to scrape by on a job interview with the boss from hell.

Jaime stared back at her, slack-jawed. "I can't believe you talked to my father that way," he whispered, respect and grudging admiration shining in his eyes.

"And I can't believe I let you talk me into going with you to this thing," Lyanna exclaimed, one hand pressed to her temple in an attempt to still her throbbing headache. "Seriously, what the fuck was that?"

“Oh, nothing much. I think my father just started plotting our wedding,” Jaime said, rather cheerfully for someone whose life Lyanna was contemplating to end.

“I- _what –”_

“You may think he’s joking, but he’s actually not,” Tyrion whispered conspiratorially to Lyanna. “You're the first girl Jaime has brought to these family events. So naturally, our father was curious about you. And now for some fucked up reason, you've won his approval."

"Yeah, but a wedding? Really?" 

"Don't act so surprised," Tyrion said with a teasing smile. "The only thing our father wants more than power is the continuation of his legacy. You'll be lucky if he doesn't call your father first thing in the morning.”

Lyanna made a disgusted sound that could’ve been a growl. “What is this, the Dragon Ages?” she exclaimed. “Besides, isn’t he aware that Jaime already has a boyfriend?”

“My father doesn’t like Arthur, as you can probably tell,” Jaime told her. “He doesn’t think his family is important enough. Also, being with him leaves me without the option of siring a potential Lannister heir.”

“Hasn’t he ever heard of adoption? Or surrogate pregnancy?”

“I’m sure he’s already considered those as part of his contingency plans,” Jaime remarked offhandedly. “But to him, there’s nothing better than the image of a loving, Lannister wife and a chubby little blond baby. Emphasis on the blond without an E.”

Tyrion laughed at the look on Lyanna’s face.

Tywin Lannister was, without a shadow of a doubt, the devil incarnate. No wonder Jaime knew so much about exorcising demons.

Something about what Tywin said to him struck her though. “Jaime,” she began slowly. “What did your father mean when he said _next time?”_

Jaime looked away and pretended to be very interested in his wine.

“Why does he think that there’s even a _next time?”_

Tyrion coughed, only barely managing to disguise his shit-eating grin. “_Next time _means a fundraiser party at the Red Keep two weeks from now,” he informed her. “Naturally, all the Lannisters are attending. Even me. I’ll save you a glass of champagne. The good kind.”

Lyanna frowned sternly at Tyrion. “No,” she said with some degree of finality. “No fucking way. Bribe me all you want with champagne, but there will be no next time. Two weeks is enough time for me to contract some form of infectious disease that would keep me away from public events. I’m serious. Don’t test me.”

Jaime grinned at her. “Oh, I wouldn’t dare,” he said. “But fine, I guess I’ll just have to settle for bringing Arthur then. Endure an entire evening of my father’s disapproving sighs and perpetual looks of disappointment. After all, Arthur owes you now.”

“Speaking of owing favors,” Lyanna suddenly recalled. “This evening was easily worth _three _favors, now that I think about it.”

“No. But because I’m a gracious person, I will concede to one and a half,” Jaime said snootily.

“Two and a half.”

“Two. And that offer’s final.”

Lyanna nodded firmly. “Two, then,” she agreed, which was the exact number of favors she was aiming to get from him anyway.

* * *

Arthur cast a moody glance out the window. He was hardly ever brooding – that particular brand of aesthetic was usually reserved for Rhaegar and, on occasion, Jaime – but, Lyanna observed as she quietly watched him from her perch on the sofa, there was nothing remotely normal about today.

Jaime had been gone for over twelve hours on a mission, one that was kept under wraps and that Lyanna was in no way, shape, or form supposed to know about, but they’d been expecting him to be finished by morning. It was now close to dinnertime. And he wasn’t back yet.

Lyanna fidgeted with the threadbare ends of her sweater as she contemplated what to do about Arthur. Of course, she was also worried about Jaime, but she forced herself to shove all doubts about his safety aside in favor of dealing with an increasingly stressed Arthur.

Even in times of crises, Arthur Dayne had always remained calm, and Lyanna could not count the number of times he’d talked her down from a nervous breakdown, but Jaime’s continued absence was a rare exception. On top of his worry for him as his partner, Lyanna could tell that he felt guilty. As his commanding officer, he was the one who had given Jaime his assignment. And given the last time Jaime had come undone after a particularly gruesome case, one that ended with Lyanna dunking his head in a bathtub filled with cold water, she knew that Arthur’s worries were entirely justified.

She shifted closer to him on the couch and, needing some form of physical contact lest they both go insane, leaned her head on his shoulder, Arthur’s chin perfectly slotted to the top of her head. “He’ll be fine, you know,” she tried to reassure him. “Jaime’s a tough guy. He’ll be back before we know it. He was probably just delayed.”

Arthur exhaled, some of the tension leaking out of him at Lyanna’s words. “I know. But I just – I can’t help but –”

“It’s not your fault,” Lyanna cut him off, her expression fierce and unyielding.

“But it is,” Arthur struggled to say. “I checked everything - triple-checked it, even - before sending him on that mission. Jaime was never a liability, even after everything that’s happened to him, but I do it anyway. I always do. I check each case assigned to him for triggers, for anything that might prevent him from performing his job to the fullest, but I’m not infallible. Maybe this time I’d managed to, I don’t know, overlook something. It’s possible. But one simple mistake could cost Jaime his life, and I - I don’t think I can bear it if -“

Lyanna slid both hands to either side of his jaw, her hands unconsciously mimicking that calm gentleness that she had only ever learned from him. “Stop it,” she whispered, her eyes pleading with him. “You’re spiralling. Stop spiralling.”

Arthur - unflappable Arthur, calm, patient Arthur - took a shaky breath and pulled her into him. “I just need to know that he’s safe,” he said hoarsely.

“He is. This is Jaime we’re talking about. He didn’t get swallowed in the womb by his twin,” Lyanna said, desperately trying for levity now that her good reasoning had obviously failed her. “When he was five, he fell off a tree and broke so many bones in his body, but he didn’t die. And he could’ve been killed and burned alive by your pyromaniac boss but instead, he survived. And remember that time we went to my family’s cabin up North and he almost slipped on the ice and broke his neck? He could’ve died then too, but he didn’t, okay? He didn’t. Trust me, Jaime is too stubborn to die.”

Lyanna saw the semblance of a smile forming on Arthur’s lips. And then there was blessed silence.

She rested her forehead against his chest, her tongue burning with all the things she wanted to say. Things like _I love you_ and _I’ll never leave you_ and _I need him the way you need him too._ But she settled, instead, for a simple _I’m sorry._

Arthur stared at her, confused. “What could you possibly be sorry for?”

Lyanna shrugged, her sheepish look hidden from him as she burrowed further into his arms, her fingers curling into the fabric of his shirt. “I’m sorry that I’m so horrible at this. At comforting you, I mean,” she clarified, her voice riddled with sadness and a rare moment of self-loathing. “With Jaime, it’s easier. I could just- I could just slap him until he starts to see sense -“

A surprised laugh escaped Arthur’s throat. “Slap him? Really?”

“Yes. Believe it or not, that usually works on him. But you –” Lyanna’s breath hitched. “I don’t know how to comfort you, how to make you feel better. So I’m sorry.”

Arthur turned her around to face him. He took hold of her shoulders with a painstaking fragility that spoke volumes in itself - there was always something about his touch that soothed every single nerve in her body and tricked her mind into thinking that she would always be safe - and he drew her closer into the safety of his arms.

“You’re wrong, you know,” he said softly, a near-echo of her earlier words. “You’re very good at comforting me.”

He cupped her cheek with his palm and she let out a quiet sigh of relief, feeling validated and content that finally, finally, she hadn’t fucked things up for once. But then he smiled at her, the light finally reaching his eyes, and her heart lurched with wretched longing, and all of a sudden, she couldn’t contain herself.

Months of tortured pining, of thoughts of _what ifs_ and _what could have beens_, bled away, and as whatever remained of her common sense and moral reasoning flew out the window, she found herself kissing him, her tongue sliding into his mouth with a savageness that contrasted sharply with the sweetness of his lips.

A part of her wanted to pull back and stop herself before she made a complete ruin of things, but Arthur was kissing her back, his grip on the back of her neck firm and unrelenting, and she just...she had wanted this for so long, had imagined this precise scenario a thousand times and more, and now that it was finally happening, she couldn’t bring herself to be the one to say no. 

_Just this once_, she pleaded with herself as she climbed onto Arthur’s lap, her thighs braced on either side of his hips, his strangled moan torching her insides with a destructiveness akin to jumping off a jagged cliff. Just this once, she wanted to be selfish.

And so she allowed herself to be.

Arthur’s hands traveled to the hem of her shirt, and when they finally had to break off for air, he redirected his lips to suck on a particular spot on her neck, making her gasp. And all the while the tiny little part of her brain that was still working kept thinking, wishing, praying, that they could stay like this forever, her fingers pulling on his hair, his mouth worshipping her skin till kingdom come.

So of course, at that point, the universe decided to intervene. They dimly registered the sound of a key turning in the lock, and a familiar, aristocratic voice calling out, “Hey, I’m home! Jesus, you wouldn’t believe the things I had to go through –”

They sprang apart, Lyanna’s eyes widening in horror and shock.

She readjusted her clothes, one hand on her mouth as though she could erase all evidence of wrongdoing if she could only will it hard enough. Arthur made a move as though he wanted to reach out to her, but of course that couldn’t be right. He couldn’t possibly have been thinking that, not with Jaime finally safe and sound and in the room with them, and - oh, _god_, Jaime.

Lyanna tasted bile at the back of her throat and tried her hardest to force it back down because, fuck, she’d already hurt Jaime enough as it is, and she would be damned if she’d ever let him see her like this now. She couldn’t, wouldn’t, let him know, and, _hell_, she truly was the worst friend in the entire universe, and of course, of fucking course, it was just like her to ruin things. And relationships. And possibly every good thing in her life. Classic Lya.

“Hey, did you know how long they tried to detain me for –” Jaime caught a fleeting glance of her pale face as she brushed past him on her way to the door and shot her a puzzled look. “Lya, where are you going? Aren’t you staying for dinner?”

“Sorry, I –” It took all of Lyanna’s considerable strength not to cry right then and there. “Something came up. I have to - have to go -”

“Lya!” Arthur whisper shouted, running after her.

But Lyanna was faster. The door swung shut behind her right before he could grab her wrist, and whatever else he had been planning to tell her, she didn’t stick around to hear them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So there you have it. Arthur gets the first kiss :) Yay or nay?
> 
> The end is almost upon us, my friends. Hang in there lol.


	5. This Must Be My Dream

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is where the rating for this fic comes in. Enjoy.

9:01 am: _lya _

9:02 am: _lyaaaa_

9:03 am: _ lya where the fuck r u_

9:04 am: _seriously call me back_

9:04 am: _LYA_

9:05 am: _LYANNA_

9:05 am: _LYANNA ALYSANNE STARK_

9:06 am: _see, now i know you’re just being mean and ignoring me_

9:07 am: _bec if u were really fine you’d yell at me for calling u alysanne_

9:08 am: _yes, i know u don’t actually have a middle name and that if u had one it wouldn’t be alysanne_

9:09 am: _but it sounds good tho right_

9:10 am_:_ _ lya fucking hell _

9:11 am_:_ _ pls just talk to me_

9:11 am: _notice how i said the word pls_

9:12 am_:_ _ arthur’s worried_

9:13 am: _and so am i _

9:14 am: _lya u heartless shrew_

9:15 am: _murdering demoness_

9:16 am_:_ _ cold-blooded wolf bitch_

9:17 am: _call me back_

10:45 am: Lya

10:46 am: Can we talk?

10:47 am: Please

10:48 am: You haven’t been answering our calls

10:48 am: I’m worried about you

10:49 am: If this is about last night

10:50 am: Just

10:51 am: Let me explain. Please

10:52 am: Please, Lya. I need to see you.

12:37 pm: _[You have one new voice message] _Hi. Good afternoon, Miss Stark! I’m so sorry, I know I’m not supposed to call you while you’re on leave, but I thought you should know... Um, there were two men who came looking for you earlier today. They’re the, uh, the ones who always come by during lunch hour. I told them you weren’t in today, but they insisted and tried to barge into your office, so I threatened to call security. And the, uh, the one with the smug face - pardon my language, Miss Stark - made a scene and said that he would harm anyone who dared to touch him, and the one with the dreamy eyes tried to stop him and eventually they left and - oh no, I’m so sorry, Miss Stark, I’m rambling. (Clears throat) Anyway, I just - I thought you should know. Have a good day, Miss Stark! I look forward to seeing you next week. Pleasedon’tfiremeokaybye!

5:28 pm: _lya, thought i’d let you know_

5:29 pm: _your two boytoys accosted me at the parking lot just now_

5:30 pm: _they wanted to know if i’d seen you recently_

5:31 pm: _i said i did, but that i was under no obligation to tell them where you are_

5:32 pm: _they looked like they wanted to arrest me_

5:33 pm: _so yes, YOU’RE WELCOME_

5:34 pm: _i win best brother of the year_

11:56 pm: Lya, let’s just talk about this

10:57 pm: Please

11:01 pm: _i can’t sleep_

11:02 pm: _i keep having nightmares that you’re lying dead in a ditch somewhere_

11:02 pm: _pls don’t be dead_

11:30 pm: I guess you’re not ready to see us yet

11:31 pm: I understand

11:32 pm: We’ll wait for you, Lya

11:33 pm: However long it takes

11:34 pm: Good night. Sleep well

* * *

Lyanna retreated to Winterfell with a vengeance, opting to run away from her problems as though the hounds of Hell themselves were after her, which, considering she was dealing with both Arthur and Jaime, seemed a rather apt description. Her father was bewildered by her sudden visit back home, but one look at the tightness in her face and he’d simply shook his head and left her alone, trusting her enough to know that if she wanted to talk about whatever it was that was plaguing her, she’d do so.

So for seven days, Lyanna locked herself in her family’s ancestral home, choking back tears behind closed doors and all but ignoring the phone that wouldn’t stop ringing, until Lyanna herself lost patience and chucked it in the laundry basket, where it would hopefully stay for all of eternity. 

In the mornings, she went riding, her chestnut-colored horse as familiar to her as the quiet grounds of her childhood, and in the afternoons, she watched trashy soap operas while gorging on ice cream and nachos dipped in Nan’s homemade salsa.

The evenings... The evenings, however, were for regret. For drowning her sorrows in her father’s secret stash of wine, for holding back sobs as she tried, but failed, to forget the taste of Arthur on her tongue, or the way he held her close, one side of her aching, acutely aware that there was a space there reserved exclusively for Jaime, a space that only he - smug bastard and dastardly paragon of recklessness that he was - could fill.

She wished she had been strong enough to resist Arthur, or rather, the temptation of him. She’d certainly been managing well enough before. And then there was that almost-kiss with Jaime at the balcony. She’d congratulated herself so well for that that she’d given in to her baser impulses that night and gotten herself off with the thought of him, the phantom sensation of his blond head nestled between her thighs. 

But that moment with Arthur in his apartment had been different. Lyanna had been so consumed with worry for Jaime, and consequently, Arthur, that she had allowed herself to be weak. And that weakness had cost her.

The whole thing was her fault. Never mind the fact that Arthur had kissed her back. If she hadn’t kissed him first, he wouldn’t have been forced to reciprocate. Or so Lyanna kept telling herself.

On the seventh day, she finally allowed herself to pick up her phone. Her heart twisted in her chest as she painstakingly read each message she’d received.

_I miss your stupid face_, Jaime had texted her.

_Come home_, Arthur’s message said.

She sighed and stared at the blanket of snow piling on her windowpane. 

No more running away. It was time for her to go back.

* * *

She heard the knock at approximately half past five. She’d been expecting it, but she still felt an unreasonable frisson of fear shoot up her spine as she rose from her spot on the couch and slowly opened her front door.

Arthur and Jaime stood on the threshold, looking hopeful and expectant. 

“Hi, Lya.” Arthur brushed a lock of his hair out of his face, his hesitant smile sending her pulse into overdrive. He was wearing the white shirt that Lyanna loved so much, the one that contrasted nicely with his tan skin and made his eyes seem brighter, and beside him, Jaime shot her a smirk so familiar, so reminiscent of the many times they’d argued and then fondly made up, that she allowed herself a moment to consider that maybe, just maybe, things would work out perfectly after all.

_We can fix this_, Lyanna thought desperately as she allowed them to come inside. She curled her hands into fists. _We can fix this._

“Hey,” Lyanna said, uncertain of how to start addressing the elephant in the room.

“Hey? After a week of silence, that’s all you have to say?” Jaime growled, raking a hand through his hair in obvious frustration. “Christ, I am so mad at you right now, I can’t even!”

Lyanna flinched.

“What Jaime is trying to say,” Arthur said haltingly, shooting Jaime a pointed look that promptly forced him to shut up, “is that we’ve been worried sick about you. Considering how we... left things, we weren’t sure you’d ever consider talking to us again.”

Lyanna kept her gaze studiously fixed on the floor. It was a shame that she never noticed how fascinating the swirling patterns of wood on her living room floor truly was until now. She cleared her throat uncomfortably, feeling remarkably unlike her usual cheery, candid self, and said, “I take it you told Jaime then?”

“Yes. Of course, he told me,” Jaime interrupted before Arthur could say a single thing. He glared at her, his mouth pressed in a thin line that reminded her of his father, and continued, “How dare you, Lya? Do you have any idea how mad I am at you? And at Arthur? I was so mad I hadn’t had sex with him in a week. A week!”

Lyanna’s heart plummeted to her stomach, the knot in her throat tightening in guilt. She could only gaze numbly at Arthur who, in turn, brought a hand to his forehead. An expression that might have passed as annoyance fleetingly crossed his face. “Jaime,” he said wearily. “Please stop talking. You’re not helping at all.”

Jaime sighed sulkily and, for once, obeyed.

“Look, Lya, about that night...” Arthur started, fixing his attention back on Lyanna.

Lyanna held her breath, bracing herself for his next words. She didn’t want to talk about what happened, didn’t want Arthur and Jaime dissecting her feelings, her heart laid bare and theirs for the taking. She didn’t think she could take it, if they decided to toss it back to her, bloodied and wrapped up in a pretty little bow. But it seemed they were finally doing this now, and there would be no talking Arthur out of it, if the resolute look on his face was any indication.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, knowing that she was seven days too late in saying so.

Arthur’s purple eyes found hers. She felt her heart skip a beat. “Sorry for what?” he said. “For running away? Or for kissing me?”

Lyanna swallowed. She wondered if she could get away with saying the truth using as little words as possible. It seemed unlikely, but it was the only option she was willing to consider at the moment. “I’m just – I –” She winced. “I’m just sorry, is all.”

“Are you really?” Arthur’s gaze was piercing. And then in a voice so soft she almost didn't hear him, he added, “Because I’m not.”

Lyanna’s eyes widened. She searched his face for any hint that he might be joking, but found none. “You _what?”_

Arthur took several steps forward until he was close enough to wrap his arms around her, should Lyanna let him. “Lya,” he breathed out her name with such reverence it sent her pulse running. “Surely you’ve realized by now that all this time we’ve been trying to seduce you.”

Lyanna barely heard him past the blood rushing to her ears. She felt faint. “What are you saying?”

Arthur tucked an errant curl behind her ear. He was now close enough to kiss her. “I’m saying that we want you,” he said simply. He said it like it was a fact, the way one might say, “oh, the Earth is round” or “there had been no dragons in Westeros for over a thousand centuries now”. Said like that, how could anyone not choose to believe him?

Unfortunately for Arthur, Lyanna wasn’t just anyone. “What the actual fuck? Is this - is this some kind of joke?” she exclaimed, backing away from Arthur only for her back to hit a wall. A wall that felt suspiciously like Jaime’s chest. She hadn’t even realized that he’d moved.

“Not everything is a joke to us, Lya,” Jaime whispered in her ear, one hand snaking to her hip to hold her in place.

“But -” The touch of his skin against the thin fabric of her skirt was scorching. She struggled to pull her thoughts together. “But you and Arthur… you’re in a relationship.”

“So?” Lyanna turned her head around just in time to catch a glimpse of Jaime haughtily raising an eyebrow at her. “Does that mean we can’t be in a relationship with other people?”

“Jaime, are you honestly telling me -”

“Lya, do you doubt me?” Arthur cut her off. He lifted her chin and traced the pads of his fingers over her cheekbones, and it was just as electric, just as magical, as when Jaime touched her, or when she and Arthur had shared their first kiss. In the time that it took for all the air to leave Lyanna’s lungs, he continued. “If you won’t listen to Jaime, then maybe you’ll listen to me? We want you. We’ve always wanted you.”

Lyanna kept her lips shut against the pressure steadily building in her throat. “But you -” she swallowed heavily. She turned to Jaime. “You told me you were mad at me. I mean, you literally just said that. You even refused to have sex with Arthur for, fuck, a week. You, of all people -”

“Of all people? What is that supposed to mean? Jesus fucking Christ, woman. I’m trying to tell you that I’m crazy about you and you still manage to have time to squeeze in an insult or two -”

“Uh, guys?”

“I can’t help it if you say such contradicting things!” Lyanna said, only vaguely aware that she was now shouting. “Tell me, how else am I supposed to interpret ‘I’m so mad at you I can’t even’? Those were your words, weren’t they? Or, what, am I supposed to -”

“My god, you really are the stupidest woman in the world! It’s a wonder my father likes you. We’ve been trying to show you for weeks -”

“Guys?”

“- believe that you’ve had a change of heart now, is that it? Well, fuck you, Jaime! Quit confusing me -”

“- but of course you can’t see it, you satanic minion of Hell. You’re so daft we could’ve proposed and you would have still missed it -”

“GUYS!” 

Lyanna and Jaime promptly shut up as an irate-looking Arthur fixed them with a look. “May I speak now? Yes, thank you,” he said, without even pausing to wait for an answer. “Jaime, kindly shut up for a moment. You’re making everything worse. And you -” This time he rounded on Lyanna, the exasperated look in his eye softening slightly at the gob smacked expression on her face. “I told you, Lya. I like you. Jaime likes you. We both do. And the reason why Jaime was so mad at both of us was because I kissed you _first_. He wanted to be the one to kiss you first.”

Lyanna opened her mouth. Closed it. Then opened it again.

A red flush crept up Jaime’s cheeks. “It’s not fair,” he complained. “If I hadn’t come home late, you wouldn’t even have had that moment. And besides, I attempted to kiss her first -”

A vague recollection of a half-naked Jaime sprawled on her balcony floor flashed through her mind. “You mean, that time -”

Jaime’s smirk said it all.

“And what about - dear god, your father’s birthday party!” Lyanna gasped, the reminder enough to send an unpleasant chill down her spine. “Was that some form of reverse psychology too? Did you honestly expect me to kiss you after being subjected to several hours of torture?”

Jaime bit back a grin. “No, that part wasn’t planned, believe me. There’s no seducing you under the watchful eye of my father,” he told her. “That was just me collecting a debt. That, and the fact that Arthur was too smart to get roped into being my date.”

At the mention of Arthur’s name, Lyanna’s nagging suspicions heightened. She tried her best to ignore the weight of Arthur’s hand on her shoulder and said accusingly, “And you? That stunt at the restaurant you pulled? Was there really a murder investigation? Or was that just your pathetic attempts at seduction?”

Arthur shrugged, guilty as charged. “I just wanted an excuse to hold your hand and call you my girlfriend,” he admitted without even an ounce of shame. “I had hoped it would make you more receptive to my future attempts to seduce you, which, let’s be honest, worked wonderfully, by the way. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have kissed me the way you did last time.”

Lyanna stared at them both, her eyes blown wide with shock. “Oh my god. I cannot believe you two!” she screeched, feeling successfully duped. “How long?”

“You mean, how long have we been trying to seduce you?” Jaime repeated. “I told you. For weeks now. Ever since you contemplated the thought of dating that bumbling Baratheon buffoon.”

Lyanna shook her head. “No. I mean, how long have you liked me?”

“Since the bathtub incident,” Jaime replied promptly. “Maybe even before then.”

She pondered the meaning behind his words. When was “before then”? When they were fighting like cats and dogs and he was convinced she was a demonic presence that he needed to exorcise against all odds? When they were both fighting for Arthur’s attention, not knowing that they’ve already had it all along? For all of Jaime’s whining, Lyanna found him difficult to read sometimes. She opened her mouth to tell him precisely that, but Arthur interrupted her.

“What about me?” The look he sent her was, by Arthur’s own standards, positively impish. “Aren’t you the least bit curious? Go on. Ask me.”

Lyanna rolled her eyes. “So bossy,” she muttered with fond indulgence. “Fine then. Since when did you like me, Arthur Dayne?”

Arthur smiled. “Since before I met Jaime,” he said, successfully surprising Lyanna with his honesty. At the dumbstruck look on her face, he added, “But by then you were already with Rhaegar. Then after that, I… well, I’d successfully convinced myself that you didn’t like me back.”

Lyanna allowed the silence to fester for a moment. “And what makes you so sure that I like you back?” she said coolly. 

For a man in danger of being rejected, he didn’t look the least bit uncomfortable. Lyanna internally cursed him for his lack of panic. “Because Jaime told me,” was his matter-of-fact reply. “He notices these things, you know. He knew that I liked you and that you liked me back way before I was ready to admit it to myself, yet despite knowing that, he still took the risk to tell me. I didn’t want to believe him, at least not at first, but I trust his judgment. Both on and off the field. And, you know, it’s funny because… well, when he said that, I told him the exact same thing.”

“That, what?” Lyanna prompted. “That I like Jaime too?”

Jaime pressed his body closer to hers, his face nuzzling her neck. “Mm. Now that’s a nice thought,” he drawled, his voice as warm as sin.

Lyanna squirmed to get away, not liking how easy it was for her to almost get lost in his touch, but Jaime’s grip on her hips was ironclad. “What if it’s only Arthur that I want?” she said challengingly.

Jaime nipped the soft spot behind her ear in punishment. “Liar,” he breathed out. “Arthur says you like me too. And I don’t know about you, but between the two of you, my money’s on Arthur.”

“Come on, Lya.” Arthur traced the shape of her mouth with his fingertips. “Don’t be like that. You’re hurting Jaime’s feelings.”

Lyanna desperately tried to back away, but they had her trapped. All it would take was for Arthur to take one more step forward and surely, he’d hear the frantic pounding of her heart. “Stop it. I mean it. I - Jesus, Arthur, are you honestly trying to seduce me right now?”

Arthur’s gaze darkened. “Why? Is it working?”

“No_,” _Lyanna was a little too quick to say. She felt a flutter deep in her belly at the way he was looking at her. Only the Arthur in her dreams had ever looked at her that way before. It was a little hard to reconcile the fact that Dream Arthur and the Arthur standing before her was one and the same. If both men in the room hadn’t been so focused on her, she’d have pinched herself.

Behind her, as though he felt the sudden lapse in attention, Jaime readjusted his hold on her, his left forearm tightening around her middle. His right hand toyed with the hem of her skirt. She fought the urge to rub her thighs together. Christ almighty, why the _fuck_ had she worn a skirt today, of all days?

Obviously, their seduction techniques did not need improvement. But despite the fact that she wanted this and had, in fact, been torturing herself with variations of this scenario since time immemorial, she couldn’t give in yet. She needed to make sure.

“Wait, wait, wait,” she said, holding up a hand to stall them both. “I need to know. This isn’t a one time thing, right?”

Arthur froze.

Jaime, meanwhile, had no qualms about giving her a piece of his mind. “Are you kidding me?” he exclaimed through gritted teeth, his forehead dropping to her shoulder. “All this talk and you still don’t get it? Good fucking lord, must we spell out everything for you, you daft, _daft _girl?”

“Lya,” Arthur admonished her as he tugged her closer to him. “Of course this isn’t a one time thing. How could you possibly think that?”

“Well, how the fuck am I supposed to know? No one _tells_ me anything. You just expect me to magically read your minds -”

Jaime exhaled heavily and stared at the ceiling, as though praying to God for patience. “Did you honestly think that once we’ve had you once, we’d be satisfied with that?”

“I don’t know. Wouldn’t you?”

“No.” Arthur pressed his lips to the inside of her wrist in answer, the unspoken _I love you _hovering in the air between them. “We don’t want something temporary.”

“So you want a relationship,” Lyanna stated.

“Yes,” Arthur said, resolute. “We want to be with you. For as long as you’ll have us.”

“Damn it, Art,” Jaime interrupted him with a scowl. “You’re saying the wrong things. You’re supposed to say, ‘You’re stuck with us forever now. Deal with it.’ Oh, and also, ‘let’s have sex’.”

“No, Jaime. That’s your line.” 

Jaime rolled his eyes. “Oh, sure. Give me all the bad lines while you get to be all chivalrous and shit. If you carry on like that, you’ll really start to hurt my feelings, you know.”

Lyanna gaped at them. “Are you two seriously trying to pull off the whole _Bad Cop, Good Cop _routine on me?”

“No. But we can, if that’s what you want.” Jaime smiled wickedly at her, leaning closer so that his lips were brushing against the shell of her ear. Then he whispered, “Would you like it, Arthur doing unspeakable, _filthy _things to you? I can be the good cop, just this once. I’ll praise you, put my hands all over you, tell you how good you are, how much I’ll reward you if you just stay still and let us do what we want with you.”

Lyanna’s breath hitched. She wanted to remain impassive, to show them both that she won’t allow herself to be manipulated like that, but then Jaime’s hand moved upwards, his fingers splayed across her throat, and she became all too aware of the frantic thudding of her pulse against his fingertips. There was no way he hadn’t noticed that.

Jaime’s smirk widened. Her fingers itched to slap him – it wasn’t fair that he and Arthur were so calm and relaxed while she was a bundle of nerves just waiting to explode – but then Arthur distracted her by dropping a kiss to her collarbone, and the control that she’d been wrestling with since the two of them entered her apartment snapped. 

There were still a dozen questions on the tip of her tongue – her recklessness was a thing of legend, and though she was about as unsubtle as Brandon, she was still _Lyanna, _and who Lyanna was was a fucked up adult who constantly fucked up relationships the way Robert Baratheon fucked through women, and she’d be damned if she managed to fuck up her relationship with Arthur and Jaime just because she was distracted by sex – but at the feeling of Arthur’s lips on her skin, she closed her eyes and thought, _oh, fuck it. _

She wrapped her arms around Arthur’s neck and pulled him into her, her mouth immediately searching for his. His lips parted, and she took the opportunity to slide her tongue across his bottom lip. He groaned, the sound sending warmth to pool in her lower belly, and she stepped back until she was pressed against the length of Jaime’s back. 

She felt his erection against the swell of her ass, but before she could do something about, his fingers dug into the flesh of her shoulder hard enough to leave bruises and he turned her around so fast she saw stars.

“Fucking finally,” he breathed out before cupping her jaw and drawing her mouth to his in a kiss that was equal parts needy and aggressive.

He tasted sweet, like the banana chocolate chip muffins she’d gotten him addicted to, and though his kisses were different from Arthur’s – he bit her lip and sucked on the swollen flesh with unrelenting pressure, like he couldn’t get enough of her, like the taste of her on his tongue was the very thing he needed to survive – there was something about them that felt _just _right. She could live off of their kisses alone, she thought.

She felt Arthur’s arms snake around her waist, his fingers dancing over her ribcage, his touch reverent and light. He dipped his chin on her shoulder and whispered, “Bedroom?”

Lyanna turned her head toward him and nipped on the spot just below his ear. “Bedroom,” she confirmed, voice hoarse.

She allowed Jaime to lift her up, her legs automatically moving to either side of his waist, and they half-ran, half-stumbled, to her bedroom in haste. She laughed as she was thrown rather unceremoniously on the bed, both men bumping into each other and almost falling off in their haste to join her.

Jaime’s hands greedily ran over her chest, his fingers making quick work of the buttons on her blouse, while further down Arthur tugged off her skirt until she was left lying practically naked in nothing but her underwear. She thanked whatever deity was present that she’d worn the black lacy ones, the ones Rhaegar had declared his favorite, once upon a time. It was well worth it, if the hungry looks on Jaime and Arthur’s faces were any indication.

Time crawled for a second as they stared at her, as though asking for permission. Their gaze roved over every inch of her – at her heaving breasts, the warm flush of her cheeks, the way her hair fanned out across the pillows like a messy halo – and she felt the weight of it, the way they stared at her as though she was pure starlight, wrapping around her until she felt dizzy with it. _God_, she wanted them so much she felt like she couldn’t breathe.

Arthur moved first, like the overeager student that he had probably once been, and Jaime followed, and together, the three of them wrapped themselves around each other like missing puzzle pieces, their bodies in perfect alignment, heartbeats and cries of pleasure synced right down to the letter. 

Lyanna bit into the taut flesh at Jaime’s hips, marking him as hers the same way she’d marked Arthur on the juncture of his neck scant minutes ago, while behind her Arthur was busy sinking into the wet heat of her, making her breath stutter and causing her to dig her fingers deeper into Jaime’s thigh.

She closed her eyes, tiny prisms dancing behind her eyelids, and tilted her head to the side to meet Arthur’s mouth for a kiss. The world shifted on its axis, and before she could completely lose herself in the sudden feeling of warmth that flooded through her chest, Jaime surged forward and impatiently grabbed her chin, his growl lost as he sighed into her mouth, his tongue flicking against hers in silent rebellion.

Lyanna smiled against his mouth, tugging on his hair to pull him closer to deepen the kiss, fingernails scraping against his scalp before drifting down to the nape of his neck, where they left a trail of bloody crescent-shaped marks. He’d have to wear shirts with high collars for _days_. The wild thing that lived within her chest purred in satisfaction.

Jaime was hers, just as she was his, just as Arthur was undeniably, without a shadow of a doubt, theirs. This, whatever this was - with Arthur sheathed fully inside her and Jaime’s teeth on her skin - felt right. 

For once in her life, Lyanna felt as though she was finally done fucking things up.

* * *

Afterwards, they collapsed on the bed, sated and more content than either of them could ever remember being. Lyanna’s head was pillowed on Arthur’s chest, her hands threaded through Jaime’s. Connected this way, she felt the telltale speeding of their heartbeats, a soothing rhythm that almost lulled her to sleep.

“So,” Jaime said as propped his chin on one hand and stared indulgently at them. “Who’s up for round two?”

Lyanna’s mouth dropped open. “Jesus Christ, Jaime,” she swore. “How are you still not tired?”

Jaime smirked. “Same reason I don’t kill you in your sleep for stealing my hair products,” he told her. “I like you too goddamn much. If we were trapped in a burning building and you asked me to have sex with you, I wouldn’t even think about trying to escape. I’d just have sex with you.”

Lyanna burrowed her face on the crook of Arthur’s shoulder to hide her grin. She wasn’t used to an affectionate, post-coital Jaime. She suspected she wouldn’t fare well with a post-coital Arthur either. 

“You know what? Maybe it’s not too late to dump you guys,” she declared, biting back a grin. “I know I’m an absolute sex goddess, but having to dole out twice as many blowjobs from here on out seems like a lot of work. I’m not sure polygamy is for me.”

“Barely twenty fours hours have passed since you’ve fucked us both and you already want to dump us? Wow.”

Arthur chuckled. “Think of it this way, Lya,” he said as he toyed with a lock of her hair and wound it over and over around his finger. “You give twice the amount of blowjobs, but you’ll get twice as many orgasms as you want too. Sounds like an equal opportunity and good return of investment, yeah? You’re a businesswoman. Surely you understand these things.”

Lyanna scowled. “Has anyone ever told you how scary you are when you’re trying to convince people to do what you want?”

“Who would’ve thought?” Jaime said with a laugh. “The famous Saint Arthur isn’t so saintly, after all.”

Lyanna tipped her chin up and sent Arthur a contemplative look. “Speaking of sainthood,” she began. “How come you’re just… okay with all of this? With Jaime, I’m not really surprised. He doesn’t have a single moral fiber in his body -”

“Hey!”

“- but with you… I never really thought you’d be the type to defy convention. Getting into threesomes and seducing your ex-best friend’s ex. That’s not like you at all. I thought you’d be more… cautious.”

Arthur’s eyes glittered. “Lya,” he said in a voice that sent warmth blooming to every corner of her chest. “There is no law on this Earth that I wouldn’t break if it means I get to have you and Jaime all to myself.”

Lyanna swallowed. She didn’t think it was possible for someone to be so turned on by such seemingly innocuous words, but Arthur had a habit of surprising her.

“Dear god,” she whispered as she splayed her fingers over his ribcage. “We’ve completely corrupted you, haven’t we?”

“Yes,” Arthur breathed out. “You two -” He kissed her temple and slid his hands along her body languorously, his fingers rubbing tight circles against the tips of her nipples. “-are a terrible influence on me. I think it goes without saying.”

Lyanna didn’t bother trying to hold back her moan. She shuddered under his touch and looked at him with hooded eyes. “I -” she stuttered as Arthur’s hands slid lower, skating over her belly button before finally settling on her inner thighs, completely bypassing the secret place where she throbbed the most. “I think - I think I’m ready for round two now.”

Jaime growled and wrapped his arms around her. “Really? When I’m the one asking you to have sex again, you say you’re too tired, but when Arthur bats his lashes at you, your first instinct is to say yes?” He nipped her jaw and flicked his tongue against her pulse point as a form of punishment, and she trembled. She could feel her blood thrumming in her veins.

“I can’t -” She gasped as Jaime’s teeth dragged across the base of her neck at the same time she felt Arthur’s thumb graze her clit. “I c-can’t help it if Arthur says such pretty things.”

“I can say pretty things too,” Jaime whispered in her ear. “For instance -” She swallowed a groan as he pinned her wrists to the bed and rolled his hips, pressing her further back into Arthur, whose hands seemed to have a mind of its own. “I can tell you exactly what I’d like to do to you. How I’d like to handcuff you to the bed and spread your legs so I can take you - over and over and over again - while Arthur rubs on your clit till you come. And then we’d switch places and make you shatter all over again, make you beg for our cocks until you’re positively sobbing with need, and then if you’re good, maybe I’ll take care of you and I’ll kiss you. Anywhere you want me to. Your pussy, those fucking gorgeous tits of yours, anywhere you want. Just say the word, my sweet, little wolf girl, and I’ll do it.”

Lyanna gave a ragged gasp as she felt herself clench on Arthur’s fingers, the pressure building within her until she felt like weeping from the sheer pleasure of it. Her eyelids fluttered shut. “Those,” she growled as she lifted herself on her elbows to draw Jaime’s mouth to hers, “were not pretty things. They were - oh _god_, don’t stop - downright filthy.”

She felt the imprint of Arthur’s smile on her shoulder. “Trust the two of you to keep arguing even in the middle of foreplay.”

With her mouth occupied with Jaime’s, she reached blindly behind her and gripped the outline of Arthur’s cock from behind. She stroked him in time to the rhythm of Jaime’s tongue swirling deep inside her mouth. The angle wasn’t ideal, but she persevered and tried to ignore the growing slickness between her thighs with each groan that escaped Arthur’s lips. 

It didn’t take long before he shuddered and fell apart in her hands. She released Jaime’s bottom lip with a pop and surveyed Arthur with dark, ravenous eyes. 

“If you want us to shut up,” she told him softly. “Then make us.”

Jaime laughed, his eyes equally as wild. “I think I’m gonna love round two,” he declared, before leaning in and capturing Arthur’s mouth in a hungry kiss.

The sight of them lip-locked made the warmth in her belly ignite. “I think I will too,” she agreed. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Belated Happy Halloween! 
> 
> Because I love you all and you've been so incredibly supportive of this fic, I've decided to write an epilogue. So no need to say goodbye just yet :)


	6. Epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wherein I do a silent fist pump while crying because finally, we’ve made it all the way to the end. Someone hand me a tissue.

** _Part One_ **

Arthur was in the middle of launching a speech - if the way he’d been staring distractedly out the window was any indication, Lyanna suspected that whatever it was must be something important and probably unrelated to Jaime’s proposal to skip work tomorrow so they could christen the new mattress on Arthur’s bedroom - when the doorbell rang.

Lyanna held her hands up in the air at the inquiring look Arthur shot her. “Pretty sure those fuzzy handcuffs I ordered the other day weren’t supposed to arrive until Monday,” she told him with a shrug. 

A look of pure unadulterated delight crossed Jaime’s face. “Fuzzy handcuffs? What else did you buy?” he asked her excitedly.

“New lingerie.”

Jaime’s eyes glazed over. “Lacy ones? Fuck, please tell me they’re red.”

“They’re red,” Lyanna replied with a smirk. “But then again, I could be lying. Don’t think I’ve forgotten that you ripped out my favorite underwear just the other day.”

“Yes, and whose fault was that? If you hadn’t been wearing those microscopic denim shorts –”

“Ooh, microscopic! Is that the Lannister word of the day?”

“Shut it, Lya,” Jaime growled. “Don’t make me come over there and spank you.”

Lyanna winked saucily at him and said, “You might want to reschedule your corporal punishment for next week. I ordered _just_ the perfect thing – You and Arthur are going to love it –”

The doorbell rang again, cutting off whatever depraved thoughts Lyanna and Jaime were intent on having. Chuckling at the disgruntled expression on their faces, Arthur rose from the couch and moved to answer the door.

His sharp intake of breath was the only warning they got before the last person they ever expected to see strode past him and into the living room.

“_Rhaegar?”_

Jaime caught Lyanna’s glass of orange juice right before it hit the carpet.

“Hello, Lya.” Rhaegar smiled beatifically at her. He was dressed immaculately, his silver hair neatly tied back with a ribbon, and he looked so out of place in Arthur’s apartment that if Lyanna hadn’t been so shocked at seeing him there she would have laughed.

“What are you doing here?” she asked him, managing to sound as though she had just swallowed a lemon. “How did you find me?”

“Varys.”

“Ah, that explains a lot.” To her horror, she noticed that he was clutching a bouquet of blue winter roses in his hands. She resisted the urge to throttle him. “Please tell me those flowers are for Arthur.”

Rhaegar laughed. The sound of it – soft, hypnotizing, and completely otherworldly – sent Lyanna’s blood boiling. There was a time in her life when she had loved to hear him laugh. But that was _then_. Now, she was so far from the girl who had liked Rhaegar that it was hard to imagine why she’d ever thought the sight of him bearing presents would have made her heart skip a beat.

“These are for you,” Rhaegar declared, dropping the flowers on her lap with a dramatic flourish.

Lyanna looked suspiciously at him. “Why are you giving me flowers?”

“Because I came to get you back, of course."

There was a heavy pause. Lyanna clenched her fists and counted to ten. Then the entire room descended into chaos.

“What are you –”

“Listen, asshole, you have some _fucking_ nerve –”

“ –playing at, Rhaegar? I told you that I liked Lyanna –”

“ – to come in here and think that you can just steal my partners. If you’re suggesting a foursome –”

“ - and you swore on our friendship that you understood –”

“ – you can forget about it. I don’t like to share, and I sure as hell don’t like being robbed of what’s mine – ”

“Rhaegar.” Lyanna didn’t shout, didn’t so much as raise her voice, but the moment she opened her mouth, Arthur and Jaime abruptly shut up. They both stared at her, wide-eyed, while Rhaegar smiled at her encouragingly.

“It’s been a year since we broke up,” she reminded her ex-boyfriend through gritted teeth, hoping to wipe the pleased smile off his face. “And I don’t know where you’ve been or what rock you’ve been hiding under, but I’m with Arthur and Jaime now. You can’t just show up here, unannounced, and demand for me to let you back into my life. I’m not some stray puppy you can kick to the curb and then adopt again a year later. Relationships don’t work like that.”

Now it was Rhaegar’s turn to appear confused. “But we belong together,” he insisted. He tilted his head to the side and frowned at her, like he genuinely couldn’t understand why she was being difficult. “You were supposed to wait for me.”

Lyanna willed her blood pressure to stay normal. “And why, pray tell, would I do that?”

“I wrote you a song,” Rhaegar explained, as though that would somehow make everything better. “_Wait for me, my darling girl. All I ask is a year, a year to drown myself in thoughts of you, a year for the planets and the stars to align. Then I shall see you again –”_

“Rhaegar, please stop singing,” Arthur interrupted him, his voice strained.

“Oh, for the love of God_,” _Lyanna exclaimed, wishing for the first time in her life that she hadn’t taken the day off from work. “You can’t honestly expect me to – and with a fucking song, no less –”

For the first time, Rhaegar’s placid mask cracked. Perhaps he was finally now realizing how gravely he’d miscalculated the situation. Lyanna could only hope. “It was _implied_,” he said, purple eyes fixed beseechingly on her.

“Funny,” Lyanna muttered. “Didn’t you say the same thing to Elia once?”

Rhaegar ignored her words. He knelt at her feet, looking the very picture of a repentant prince, and took her hands in his. “Fate has brought us together, Lya,” he told her as he rubbed circles on her knuckles. There was a strange, feverish glint to his eye that Lyanna did not like. “I know you don’t believe in such things, but there is no escaping our destiny. Our love was written in the stars –”

“Don’t make me laugh,” Jaime snarled as he furiously wrenched Lyanna’s hands away from Rhaegar’s. “I think we’ve had enough of your bullshit for one day, Targaryen. You have one minute to leave before I start throwing punches.”

Rhaegar’s eyes slid past Jaime, his threat barely even registering. “Lya, please,” he whispered.

The distant part of Lyanna that still cared about beauty and fairness and karmic justice noted that even like this – rejected, confused, and one step away from being hurled out the door – Rhaegar still managed to look beautiful. It was so fucking unfair.

Maybe the Lyanna a year ago would have wavered. But Arthur and Jaime’s presence at her side steeled her spine, and she found herself unmoved by Rhaegar’s charm. Which was just as well, because she’d sooner die than take him back again, provided Brandon and Elia didn’t kill her first.

“Rhaegar, listen to me,” Lyanna said. “I’m sorry but, short of death or infidelity, there’s no way that I am ever, _ever, _breaking up with Arthur and Jaime.”

Something about the expression on her face must have convinced him. He staggered as though Lyanna had just plunged a dagger into his heart. “You’re sure?” he asked her one last time.

“Yes,” Lyanna replied firmly, jaw set. “Please, go home. There’s nothing left for us to talk about.”

Rhaegar’s eyes were sad. “For what’s its worth, Lya,” he said softly. “I _am_ sorry.”

He stood up and left the room without a backwards glance. 

In the aftermath, the three of them stared at each other.

“What the fucking hell was that_?” _Jaime exclaimed, finally breaking the silence.

Arthur shrugged, looking torn between laughing and sighing out loud. “Just Rhaegar being Rhaegar, I guess.” He turned to Lyanna. “You alright?”

Lyanna nodded. “Yeah,” she replied, surprised to realize that she actually meant it.

“Fucking crazy, that Targaryen guy,” Jaime muttered with a shake of his head. “Who the hell would wait an entire year before winning someone back?”

“I visited his place several times and saw him looking at star charts,” Arthur confessed. “But that was months ago. I thought he’d already gotten over Lya.”

Jaime laughed. “No one gets over Lya.”

Arthur suppressed a grin. “Too true.”

"Trying to butter me up for your speech?" Lyanna asked Arthur with a teasingly quirked eyebrow.

"What speech?" Jaime wanted to know.

"The one he's been preparing for since he woke up this morning," Lyanna said matter-of-factly. At Arthur's incredulous look, she laughed. "What? Did you really think I wouldn't notice? You fiddle with your family signet ring when you're deep in thought. And you keep sneaking glances at us. Wasn't really hard to put two and two together."

"Hear that, Jaime? Our girl has suddenly become a detective," Arthur said once the shock of Lyanna's mad observational skills had finally worn off.

“Arthur, your speech?” Lyanna reminded him impatiently. "C'mon, now. Spit it out."

“Oh, alright.” Arthur bent down to press his lips against her collarbone while his other hand settled around Jaime’s shoulders, bringing him closer to his chest. He looked at the pair of them with bright lilac eyes and, as casually as he could, said, “Move in with me.”

Lyanna blinked, mouth agape. “_What?”_

Jaime looked equally as stunned. “Fuck, are you serious?”

“I am,” Arthur replied, the corners of his eyes crinkling as he smiled once more. “So, how about it? You practically live here anyway, so I don’t think it’ll be much of an adjustment.”

Lyanna pretended to think it over. “Hmm. That depends…” her voice trailed off. “Will I get a lot of morning sex? Shower sex? Post-work stress relief sex?”

“Done, done, and done,” Arthur promised her, trying hard not to laugh. “Any other demands?”

“Aside from Lyanna’s realistic expectations of you having twice as much energy as the average male stripper, I only want one thing,” Jaime drawled. “I get to bring my gold Jacuzzi.”

Arthur gazed disbelievingly at him. “Jaime, there is no space for a Jacuzzi in this apartment.”

“Then I guess we’ll just have to find a new place for the three of us,” Jaime said offhandedly, one eyebrow raised as though daring either of them to argue.

“Seriously?”

“It’s me and the Jacuzzi or nothing, Art,” Jaime told him with a smirk. Turning to Lyanna, he whispered, “I’m thinking five-bedroom house with a movie room, gym, infinity pool, and a garage large enough for our cars and motorbikes.”

Lyanna’s eyes sparkled, recognising the conspiratorial look on Jaime's face. “Ooh, I want one that comes with a tennis court!”

Arthur groaned. “Guys, be serious. We can't get a mansion,” he said firmly.

“Why not?” Jaime whined. “Money isn’t an issue. And you said it yourself. My Jacuzzi won’t fit inside your apartment. Besides, buying a new house will have the added bonus of keeping Rhaegar away. We can pick a place that’s basically untraceable so not even Varys will be able to find us.”

“He has a point, Arthur,” Lyanna said, giving him her best puppy dog look.

“Fine. We'll find a new place,” Arthur relented with a roll of his eyes. “Just… no mansions.”

Lyanna shared a look with Jaime. In truth, she wasn’t really one for chateaus and mansions and whatnot, but riling Arthur up was too much fun and since most of the time she had to settle for taking the piss out of Jaime, this was too good of an opportunity to pass up.

She inwardly smirked. Of course she didn’t want to live in some weird, stuffy version of Jaime’s ancestral home, but Arthur didn’t need to know that. At least, not yet.

“But Arthur,” she whined, biting her lip to keep herself from laughing out loud at his already annoyed expression. “Are you absolutely _sure _that you don’t want a mansion?”

“Yeah,” Jaime chimed in. “What if I accidentally purchase one while I was drunk?”

“How does one accidentally purchase a house – no, a mansion – while drunk?” Arthur said exasperatedly.

“You know, that sounds suspiciously like a challenge.” Jaime arched an eyebrow. “Careful. You really don't want to challenge me.”

Arthur only shook his head and laughed, all previous grievances forgotten. "As if you weren't already tempted."

He may not relish the idea of living like a Lannister – ironic, given the fact that he wanted to live _with _a Lannister – but Lyanna could tell that he was mostly just relieved that they had taken his suggestion to moving in together in stride. It was a big step for them, no matter which way Lyanna looked at it, but from her – and she was betting Jaime’s as well – point of view, there really was no question about it.

It had taken so long for them to come full circle, but at the end of the day, it all came down to this: the three of them, together, _always, _the way it should be.

Rhaegar would have called it fate or some other astrological bullshit, but Lyanna didn’t believe in such things. In a way though, she grudgingly acknowledged that it was because of him that she’d met Arthur, who in turn, introduced her to Jaime. Without Rhaegar, the three of them probably wouldn’t be together. If Rhaegar wasn't such a whiny asshole, she'd have thanked him for it.

* * *

**Lion Boy: **_[Link: Silver Prince Releases New Single Entitled _Goodbye Winter Rose_…]_

**Saint Arthur: **Oh no

**Saint Arthur: **Tell me he didn’t

**Lion Boy: **oh but he did

**Wolfgirl: **THAT FUCKING ASSHOLE

**Wolfgirl: **I’M GONNA KILL HIM

**Lion Boy: **there’s even a music video

**Wolfgirl: **WHAT

**Lion Boy: **he got my cousin lancel to play me

**Lion Boy: **and there’s some horrid looking chick that's supposed to be u, lya

**Wolfgirl: **WTF?

**Saint Arthur: **Wow. They managed to recreate an exact replica of my apartment

**Saint Arthur: **I’m impressed

**Saint Arthur: **And the song is actually quite good

**Saint Arthur: **Rhaegar might just win another Grammy for this

**Wolfgirl: **arthur, is that supposed to make me feel better?

**Wolfgirl: **because if so, it’s not working

**Saint Arthur: **Sorry

**Saint Arthur: **Do you want me to talk to him tomorrow? I can invite the whole gang and we can do some sort of intervention

**Saint Arthur:** Wait. On second thought, maybe I shouldn’t

**Saint Arthur: **I think Rhaegar’s still secretly pissed at me for stealing his beloved winter rose

**Wolfgirl: **arthur istg

**Wolfgirl: **call me that again and i will END YOU

**Lion Boy: **speaking of ending people

**Lion Boy: **can we pls off lancel

**Lion Boy: **he needs to suffer a horrible and painful death for daring to impersonate me

**Wolfgirl: **sure thing

**Wolfgirl: **as long as we kill rhaegar first

**Saint Arthur: **I hate to interrupt the plotting session

**Saint Arthur: **But can I just remind you both that you wouldn't look good in matching orange jumpsuits?

**Lion Boy: **how dare u

**Lion Boy: **i look good in anything

**Wolfgirl: **actually, loverboy, u look good in nothing

**Lion Boy: **ha

**Lion Boy:** i knew there was a reason i seduced u

**Wolfgirl:** speaking of seduction

**Wolfgirl: **i just had a brilliant idea, thanks to our darling arthur

**Saint Arthur: **Oh boy. Am I gonna like this?

**Wolfgirl: **that depends

**Wolfgirl: **do u like to be the jailbird or the jailer?

**Lion Boy: **OHHH

**Lion Boy: **i am so in

**Saint Arthur: **Your depravity truly knows no bounds

**Saint Arthur: **Is it too late to take back my offer for you guys to move in?

**Lion Boy: **too late art

**Lion Boy: **i already shipped off my jacuzzi to our new place 2 hrs ago

**Saint Arthur: **Enough with the damn Jacuzzi already, Jaime

**Wolfgirl: **omg did u just swear

**Wolfgirl: **okay that's it

**Wolfgirl: **i'm appointing you as JAILER

**Lion Boy: **this is the best idea ever!

**Saint Arthur: **You two are impossible

* * *

** _Part Two_ **

Lyanna should have known the moment she woke up that morning - hair askew, eyes red-rimmed, that familiar feeling of having cotton stuck to the roof of her mouth - that today was going to be a bad day.

In retrospect, she should have blamed Jaime and his penchant need to transform every celebration party into a bacchanal, but knowing Jaime, he’d only turn the tables on her and blame her for getting that coveted Braavosi deal in the first place. She could almost hear the obnoxious, teasing voice at the back of her head that sounded suspiciously like him telling her that if she hadn’t gone and shown the world how fucking brilliant she was by successfully making a deal with one of the most reclusive and wealthiest races known in the Free Cities, Jaime wouldn’t have felt the need to douse her chest with honeyed wine so that he could watch Arthur lick it off her in a rare display of drunken debauchery. But beyond that and the short flashes of the three of them tossing back whiskey shots and making out in Jaime’s stupidly pretentious gold Jacuzzi, she couldn’t remember much of what actually happened last night.

_Fucking hangover_, Lyanna thought as she clumsily crawled out of bed and stumbled into the shower, aware that Arthur and Jaime had already left for work and had traitorously left her to fend for herself with nothing but a bottle of aspirin and a cup of Tyrion’s home brewed hangover juice sitting on the nightstand.

_Fucking boyfriends_, she thought rather ungenerously. How dare they try to butter her up with their sweet fucking gestures and exclamations of praise of how fucking proud of her they were for taking the Stark empire to new heights? They’d even taken the post-celebratory sex to a whole new level, though she could scarcely remember most of it. Her sore muscles and that delicious ache between her thighs, however, made it difficult to deny the evidence.

She dressed quickly and forced herself to down Tyrion’s vile concoction without gagging, but by the time she went to work, her foul mood showed no signs of abating.

At first she’d chalked it up to the scowl she’d plastered on her face the moment she stepped foot inside her office building. She could hardly blame everyone if she looked about as rotten as she felt on a weekday. But as the hours wore on and she flitted from meeting to meeting, she had the sudden sense that something had gone horribly wrong. There was such a weird mood at the office today, and she was beginning to think that it had something to do with her.

For the most part, she was content to ignore it. But by the time her secretary spilled coffee all over herself at the sight of their lady boss lounging about in the break room, triggering a chain reaction that had her falling backwards and causing the guy behind her to spill the box of donuts he’d been carrying, Lyanna had had enough.

She sighed loudly, drew herself to her full height, and snapped, “Alright, enough already. Is there something you guys would like to say to me?”

The silence in the room was deafening.

“Really? Nothing at all?”

Everyone skilfully avoided eye contact with her.

Lyanna rearranged her facial muscles to make herself significantly less threatening, an act that was made almost impossible by the dark circles under her eyes and the unnatural paleness of her skin from a night spent drinking nothing but hard liquor. “Oh, c’mon. I promise I won’t get mad,” she said.

Some of the interns exchanged cautious looks with each other, before one of them finally plucked up the courage to blurt out, “We just wanted to say congratulations!”

“We’re so happy for you, Miss Stark!”

The lady that Lyanna had annoyingly pegged as the leader of the Arthur Dayne fanclub beamed at her, looking near tears. “Yes, so happy,” she exclaimed. “We would have congratulated you sooner, but you looked…” She winced. “Well, you looked like you had a little too much fun celebrating last night. So we were trying to make as little noise as possible…”

Lyanna blinked, confused. “Err… thanks?” She assumed they were talking about yesterday’s smashing success with the Braavosi. She knew the business deal she had managed to strike was good, but she hadn’t anticipated this kind of reaction from everyone else. Were they really that surprised that she was able to pull it off?

One of the interns leaned forward. “So when’s it going to be, boss? And have you given any thought as to where you'll be sealing the deal?”

Lyanna’s brow furrowed. She had never seen this level of excitement at the office before. “Well, I imagine we'll conduct it here. You know, in the city. We’ll be signing the papers the day after tomorrow.”

The same girl who had spilled coffee all over herself fell off her chair. Several ladies shrieked. “What? The day after tomorrow?” they wailed, eyes nearly popping out of their sockets. “That fast?”

“Naturally,” Lyanna replied with a well-practiced confident smile. “I don’t want to give them a chance to change their minds.”

“And… there’s not even going to be a ceremony? You’ll just be… signing papers and stuff?”

Lyanna snorted. “Who do you think my father is? Tywin Lannister? Of course it won’t be too formal,” she said.

Brandon’s personal assistant gaped at her. “But it’s your day!” she exclaimed. “Don’t you want to… oh, I don’t know, at least wear a dress?”

Lyanna stared at them. Seriously, what was going on with everyone? Had they all inhaled liquid nitrogen or something? “A dress? Why on earth would I?” She scrunched up her nose in mild irritation, her hangover headache coming back with a vengeance. “I’m wearing pants and a blazer. I don’t see what the big deal is, honestly. You guys are all acting as though I’d just declared myself as Aegon the Conqueror.”

“Not a big deal, she said.” The lady to her right looked close to fainting.

“Miss Stark,” her secretary declared, eyes shining with unshed tears. “You are, by far, the most badass woman I have ever met. I think I speak for everyone in this room when I say that we all want to be you.”

Lyanna left the break room feeling more uncomfortable and confused than she had been when she first came in. The reason for everyone’s weird behavior, though, only became clear to her by the time lunch time rolled around.

“Sorry I’m late,” Lyanna exclaimed as she took the empty seat across from Howland at the secluded café she’d agreed to meet him at. She reached out for his untouched bread roll and bit into it, heedless of the crumbs falling onto her pristine suit, and proceeded to rant, “I kept getting waylaid by all these people telling me congratulations –”

She had a split second to register the sensation of lukewarm coffee trickling down her face and onto her chin before she turned her shocked gaze to her friend. “Goddammit, Howl,” she cried, dabbing at her face with a napkin. “What the hell was that for?”

For someone who had just spat coffee on her face, Howland looked awfully unapologetic. “Jesus _fucking _Christ, Lya. I can’t believe it!”

“Believe what?”

Howland snatched her hand away from her face and inspected the ring on her finger. The ring that, until a few hours ago, Lyanna had not known was there. “You’re engaged!”

Lyanna gaped at the strange metal encircling her ring finger. Apparently, her hangover had left her feeling so numb that she had failed to register something as obvious as wearing a ring.

She frowned. She was perfectly ready to dismiss this as another one of Arthur’s sweet gestures – he was, after all, fond of buying her trinkets just because he knew it made her smile – but the combined symbols of both men's Houses engraved on the metal – a roaring lion basking in a field of stars – made her doubt that this gift was as simple as she’d made it out to be. No, she _knew _this ring.

“Wha- what the hell is this? When did this happen?” she shrieked, mentally combing through her hazy memories of last night to determine if she’d somehow missed accepting Jaime and Arthur’s marriage proposal while sloshed. She was pretty sure the only things she had said yes to last night was to three rounds of sex and a promise to take Jaime’s new motorbike for a test drive. While naked. True, she had been drunk, but she hadn’t been _that _drunk. Which meant that they had slipped the ring on her finger while she was asleep. She growled. _Those bastards._

Howland laughed. “You’re asking me?” At the furious look on her face, he paused. “Wait, you really didn’t know they gave you an engagement ring?”

“No!” Lyanna snarled. “I mean, they’ve tried asking me so many times now that I’ve lost count, but I’ve always said no. Last night wasn’t any different. So I don’t understand how – _oh my god.” _She suddenly remembered everyone’s reactions at the office. At the time, she thought they were averting their eyes because they were just too polite not to stare at her terrible, hungover face. But now she realized all along that they’d been staring at her right hand. No, her ring.

She winced and pressed a palm to her face. They’d offered her congratulations. And she’d smiled and thanked them and said – _fuck. _All of a sudden, that entire conversation at the break room took on a whole new meaning. Great, just fucking great.

She stood up from her seat, ignoring the amused grin that Howland was sporting, and gritted her teeth. “Sorry to cut this lunch short, Howl,” she said, not sounding the least bit apologetic. “But I gotta go. I have two boyfriends I need to skin alive.”

* * *

As it turned out, plotting the murder of two cops while surrounded by other cops was easier said than done. Jaime had taken one look at her and, with a cunning that could have made Tywin Lannister proud, called out to every single person in the room, “Hey, everyone! Meet our fiancée!”

Before Lyanna could even think to protest, she found herself surrounded by a dozen of Jaime and Arthur’s co-workers, each one of them offering her their sincerest congratulations. It took several minutes for her to get past the crowd of well-wishers, and when she finally did, she found herself staring at a smirking Jaime and an amused, almost repentant Arthur.

Immediately recognizing the dangerous look on her face, Arthur stood up from the desk he’d been leaning against and dragged her and Jaime into his office just in time to stop everyone from witnessing Lyanna’s fist connecting with his shoulder.

Arthur grunted as he fended off another attack. Lyanna was small, but boy, was she vicious. “Hello, Lya,” he greeted her with a pained smile. “So nice of you to visit.”

“Don’t you _hello_ me, Arthur Dayne,” Lyanna snapped, grey eyes alight with a fury she usually reserved for Jaime. “Did you know your underlings kept asking me how you two proposed? I nearly had to bite my tongue off just to stop myself from screaming that _no, _I didn’t know how. Because. I. Don’t. Remember. Accepting. A. Fucking. Ring.”

Jaime shook his head and made a tsk-ing gesture with his mouth. “Oh, please don’t bite your tongue off. Your tongue is one of my favorite things about you,” he purred.

Arthur elbowed him in the ribs before he could dig a larger hole for himself and turned to face Lyanna. “Lya, we’ve already proposed to you a total of eight times,” he reminded her.

“Nine, actually,” Jaime said with a smug little grin. “You forgot that time I got shot on the shoulder and I pretended I was dying and that my final wish was to get married to you.”

Despite himself, Arthur laughed. “Personally, my favorite was that time we proposed to her at that new restaurant and tried to trick her into accepting so that the waiter could give us free wine.”

“And, oh, don’t forget that time we snuck a ring inside her fortune cookie and she almost cracked a molar when she accidentally bit on the metal.”

This earned them both a smack on the arm. It was a good thing Arthur had closed the door and shut the blinds in his office, otherwise, their entire department might just shit themselves seeing their superior officer being treated this way by a woman half his size.

“_She _is standing right here,” Lyanna growled, irritated that they seemed to be ignoring the real reason why she’d come to see them in the first place. “So, can either one of you care to explain how I ended up wearing an engagement ring that I clearly don’t remember accepting? Jaime, since I’m assuming this is your idea, what did you do? Did you – did you drug me?”

Jaime scoffed. “Don’t be so dramatic,” he drawled. “I did _not. _We partied all night, had sex, got drunk, and when you passed out in bed, I slid the ring onto your finger. It’s not a big deal.”

“Not a big deal_?_ Are you _kidding _me?” Lyanna screamed. “You can’t just slip a ring on my fucking finger without my permission and just declare us engaged!”

“Well, what the fuck else were we supposed to do? You kept saying no. So we got tired of asking.”

“You’re a dead man, Jaime Lannister,” Lyanna said as she advanced on him. Arthur caught her eyeing the glass bauble on his desk, the one that Allyria had given him for his birthday. Knowing her temper better than anyone else, he subtly moved the figurine out of reach so she wouldn’t be tempted to hurl it at them.

Jaime, abandoning whatever self-preservation instinct he once might have had, merely rolled his eyes at Lyanna’s words. “I’m not a dead man. I’m a crazy man,” he told her. “I must be, if I decided that you and Arthur are actually worth marrying. I mean, we all know Arthur's so scary he could conquer the world and people would _thank_ him for it, while you... you’re actually Satan disguising as – Ow! Jesus fuck, woman. What the hell did you do that for?”

“Lya,” Arthur called her, desperate to change the subject so as to avoid another failed attempt at murder courtesy of Lyanna’s fists, “Why _don’t_ you want to get married? Don’t you love us?”

Lyanna frowned. “Of course I do. But… don’t you think it’s too soon?”

“We’ve been dating for three years, Lya,” Arthur reminded her gently. “I don’t think it’s too soon. It’s…”

“I think the word you’re looking for is _inevitable,” _Jaime said, his smug grin widening at the surprised looks on Arthur and Lyanna’s faces.

Arthur heard Lyanna muttering something about “fucking Lannister words of the day” and stifled a laugh. “You’ve rejected us eight – sorry, nine – times, Lya. Give us one good reason why you can’t marry the both of us,” he told her, determined to change her mind if it was the last thing he ever did.

“Uhh, for one thing, it’s not legal.”

The egotistical smirk Jaime sent her was enough to keep several islands afloat. “It is now,” he proudly informed her. “All I had to do was say your name and the word ‘marriage’ in one sentence and my father took care of the rest. You know it's been his lifelong dream to combine the Stark and Lannister fortunes together and have tiny little Lannister brats to lord over. And when I told him the news... I swear to God, if the man had actual tear ducts, he’d have cried tears of joy. The guy’s a right horror, we all know that, but he has his uses.”

Judging by Lyanna’s scowl, she had not been expecting that particular breach in her argument. But then again, if left up to her, they’d be eighty and well on their way to dementia before they ever married.

“Okay. What else?” Arthur asked her, hiding his smile behind a curtain of dark hair.

“I don’t want to change my last name,” Lyanna confessed.

“Why not? Lyanna Lannister sounds fucking perfect to me,” Jaime said.

“Don’t you mean Lyanna Dayne?”

“Nope, doesn’t have quite the same ring to it as Lyanna Lannister. But I’m sure if you beg hard enough, Art, we’ll allow you to add the Dayne part in the end.”

Lyanna shuddered in revulsion. “Lyanna Lannister? Jaime, there’s not even a slimeball’s chance in hell –”

“Fine, then. Lyanna Stark-Lannister-Dayne. You’ll hyphenate. Whatever.” Jaime gave an exaggerated sigh. “Next issue?”

“I don’t want children. At least not for a few more years.”

The thought of Lyanna bearing their future children caused a tug in Arthur’s heartstrings, and he valiantly tried to suppress the longing in his face so that Lyana wouldn’t further panic. “We’ll only have children once you’re ready,” he promised her.

“If you never want to have them, I’m fine with that too. We can just adopt lion cubs or whatever the hell you want,” Jaime told her.

If they hadn’t been negotiating over their potential marriage, Lyanna would have smiled. Lion cubs? _Honestly. _

“So are those all of your reasons then? Or do you still have more?” Arthur asked her.

Lyanna paused for a moment to think. “I don’t want one of those stuffy weddings,” she said. “Hell, I don’t think I want a wedding at all.”

“Fine then, we’ll elope.”

“So? How about it?” Arthur stared hopefully at his girlfriend. “Will you finally agree to marry us?”

Lyanna sighed, looking thoroughly inconvenienced. “Ugh, fine,” she finally conceded. “You’ve begged me long enough, so I might as well, I guess.”

“You know, it’s cute that you think you had a choice,” Jaime said, his smirk widening.

* * *

** _Part Three _ **

“Move it! MOVE!” A frantic Jaime yelled as he pushed people out of the way of the moving stretcher alongside him, the veins of his outstretched left arm popping under the strain of Lyanna’s ironclad grip.

On Lyanna’s other side, Arthur was in a similar position, his head bent as he murmured quiet reassurances in her ear. “Just breathe, sweetheart. Breathe,” he whispered as he pressed a kiss to her sweaty forehead.

“Breathe? That’s your brilliant advice, Arthur Dayne?” Lyanna screamed as another powerful contraction swept over her body. “Yes, how fucking delightful! Did you think just because my stomach is now swollen to the size of a watermelon that I’d actually cease to do something as basic as breathing? What, do I need your permission now for my fucking lungs to actually work?”

Both men winced as the volume of Lyanna’s screams increased the closer they got to the delivery room doors.

Twenty minutes later, they rejoined their friends and family members out in the hallway, the traumatized look on their faces eerily reminiscent to those who had survived the last Dance of the Dragons.

“So? What’s the update?” Ned asked them as he rushed forward to greet them. “Is it a boy or a girl?”

“Shit, please tell me it’s a girl,” Tyrion pleaded as the same time Brandon loudly expressed his wish that it would be a boy.

All the women – with Catelyn being the deadliest of them all – shot them stern glares.

“What?” Tyrion said, blinking innocently. “We have a lot riding on this bet.”

Arthur grimaced as he ran a hand over his face. “We don’t know yet,” he told the group. “Lyanna kicked us out of the room before we had the chance to find out. Said she couldn’t stand to look at our faces anymore and that the moment the baby comes out, she’s gonna divorce us both. That, and she promised to neuter us herself as soon as she becomes well enough.”

“Lovely woman, your sister,” Jaime told a sniggering Benjen.

“Wouldn’t be surprised if she ended up breaking all the bones in my hand,” Arthur said with a tired sigh. “I’ve been catching bad guys for so many years now, but I don’t think I’ve ever encountered anything quite as scary as Lya when she’s in labour. I swear, at one point, I actually felt my spirit leaving my body.” 

“Yeah, well, at least she didn’t punch you in the jaw.” Jaime rubbed the skin below his ear, where the faintest imprint of Lyanna’s wedding ring could be seen. “How the hell the woman could have perfect aim while lying on a metal table with stirrups, I will never know. I knew it. I fucking knew I shouldn’t have impregnated that demoness.”

Ashara had no qualms smacking him on the back of the head. “Language,” she scolded her brother-in-law. “Do you really want your baby to grow up hearing that kind of language?”

“At the rate she’s going into labor, I’d be surprised if I live long enough to see our son.”

“Daughter,” Tyrion and Howland announced at the same time.

Allyria looked at everyone present and frowned. “Am I the only one who didn’t know about this stupid bet?”

Elia spared her an amused glance. “You’re rubbish at guessing games, sweetie,” she said. “So let’s not even go there.”

Jaime ignored them all. “I can’t believe this is happening today! I had to miss the Championship League Finals for this. I bet Lya knew. That devious woman. She probably broke her water on purpose just to spite me,” he whined. He snatched Tyrion’s whiskey-laced coffee and took a generous sip. “Seriously, how much longer do you think this is gonna take? There’s only one way out of her body and our kid can’t even be bothered to find it?”

“Well, if the baby takes after you, there’d be no hope for him at all,” Brandon said with a snicker.

“Yeah. Or, you know, _she_ could just use those demonic claws of hers to slice her way out of Lya’s womb,” Tyrion quipped.

“Pfft. Who do you think my child is? Father?”

“I was thinking more along the lines of Cersei, but yes, excellent point.”

“God, let’s hope not.”

Catelyn stared at both Lannister brothers in dismay and shook her head. “Thank god Lya has at least one sane husband,” she told Arthur. “For your child’s sake, I hope she takes after you.”

Two hours later, Alysanne Stark-Dayne-Lannister entered the world. She had the trademark Stark hair with the matching screaming lungs to boot and, though neither of her parents knew it yet, she was also lucky enough to inherit her father’s brilliant purple eyes. When they all saw her, everyone in the family sobbed and declared her perfect, none more so than the four individuals whose pockets had just become a tad bit heavier upon the announcement of her birth.

* * *

** _Part Four_ **

“No. Absolutely not.”

“But Daddy!” A pouting Allie turned the full force of her puppy dog eyed stare – the same one Lyanna had perfected almost a decade ago and had apparently passed on to their daughter – to him.

Jaime almost felt his resolve crumble, but shook himself at the last minute and stared her down. “No. I’m not changing my mind, princess.” Allie’s lip began to tremble, a war tactic that she had probably learned from Arthur’s side of the family – Ashara could be a right manipulative bitch when she wanted to – but Jaime ignored her. “What did I tell you, Allie? Lannisters do not beg.”

“Jaime, don’t you think you’re overreacting a little?” Arthur said with a laugh as he reached for the sippy cup on the table and held it out for one of the twins to take.

Jaime sniffed. “No, I am not.”

“Yes, you are. It’s just a play date,” Lyanna told him as she bounced a bright-eyed Leo on her knee and fussed with his blond curls before winking at her eldest daughter and saying, “Isn’t that right, sweetheart?”

Allie nodded enthusiastically, tiny hands clasped together below her chin in an adorable display of supplication. “Yes! Please, Daddy. I promise to be good,” she pleaded, proving once and for all that she was more Dayne than Lannister at the moment, despite Jaime’s wishes for her to act otherwise.

“You can play with all the other children _except_ for the Targaryen brat,” Jaime declared.

“His surname isn’t even Targaryen,” Arthur argued.

“Yes, but he’s half one, isn’t he?”

“Dany is perfectly sane. Nothing like Rhaegar at all,” Lyanna said, choosing not to mention that time she’d witnessed her ex-boyfriend’s sister completely eviscerate one of the parents for making snide remarks about her son’s Dothraki heritage.

“But Daddy, Rhaego is my only friend.”

“I find that hard to believe, princess,” Jaime said, his gaze softening as he tucked one unruly curl behind her ear. “You’re the prettiest and most charming child at school. How can anyone refuse to be friends with you?”

“Have you forgotten that Allie got into a fight with one of the Greyjoy children last week because she saw him trying to bully one of the younger kids? She almost broke his nose,” Arthur told Jaime, letting him know that he blamed him fully for teaching their six-year-old kid how to punch bullies. “Ever since then, all the other children have been terrified of her.”

“That’s my little girl!” Jaime and Lyanna exclaimed at the same time, proud smiles on their faces.

Arthur frowned disapprovingly at them and pulled baby Johanna, who looked identical to Leo save for her eyes, which were slate-grey instead of green, closer to his chest. “Let’s hope you didn’t inherit your mom and dad’s penchant for violence, sweet girl,” he whispered softly in her ear.

Lyanna surveyed him through narrowed eyes. “What was that?”

“I said Jaime should allow Allie to hang out with Rhaego. Completely supervised, of course,” Arthur replied quickly, giving her that angelic smile he knew she wouldn’t be able to resist.

Lyanna beamed at him, her mood instantly shifting. “Yes, that’s right.” She pinched Jaime on the forearm. “Jaime, don’t be such an evil monster and just say yes.”

“I said no! There is no fucking way that I will allow our precious baby to fraternize with a fucking Targaryen –”

Allie’s eyes widened. “Swear Jar!” She pointed to the half-full jar decorated in animal stickers and giggled as Jaime pushed his bottom lip forward.

“Oh, c’mon, princess. Surely you can make an exception for your dashing father.”

“But Mommy said you have to put money in the jar every time you say a bad word. It’s the rules.”

“Yes, but what if Daddy says please? Will you obey me instead of Mommy?”

Allie blinked innocently at him. “But – Daddy, I thought you said Lannisters don’t beg?”

Jaime gaped open-mouthed at their daughter while Arthur and Lyanna both laughed at him.

“I think what your father is trying to say, Allie bear, is that he’ll agree to let you play at Rhaego’s house on Sunday if you also agree not to make him put money in the Swear Jar. Just this once,” Lyanna said, finally taking pity on her husband. She arched an eyebrow at Jaime and shot him a warning look. “Isn’t that right, Jaime?”

Jaime scowled, knowing when he was finally defeated, and dropped a kiss on his daughter’s forehead. “Oh, alright,” he grudgingly agreed. “But the moment that boy starts mistreating you, you punch him just like Daddy and Mommy taught you and you come straight to us and tell us, okay?”

Allie squealed and threw her arms around her father before running up the stairs so she could call Rhaego and tell him the good news.

Jaime stared accusingly at Arthur. “That girl is _clearly_ your daughter,” he told him. “Fucking scary, the both of you are.”

Lyanna snorted. “Yeah, well, just wait until the twins grow up,” she said. “With our luck, Leo will end up just like you.”

“Not if I have anything to say about it,” Arthur muttered under his breath.

Jaime, upon hearing Arthur’s words, turned his panicked gaze on his wife. “Lya, let’s try again for another kid, yeah? What do you say? We’ll raise him far away from Arthur so he can’t corrupt him –”

“Jaime, how many times do I have to tell you? We are not raising a football team –”

“Why not? I thought you liked football? Four is a nice, even number –”

“Yeah, and so is zero. Zero as in zero sex for you tonight and for the next few weeks. I’m sending you to the doghouse.”

“Like hell you are –”

Arthur stood up from his seat, stealthily picked up Leo from Lyanna’s arms while balancing Johanna on the other, and left them to their bickering so that he could, to paraphrase Jaime, continue to corrupt their children.

He stifled a laugh. And to think that, just a few years ago, both of them had been so convinced that they had corrupted him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, that’s it. We are done. I’m sorry it took me a bit longer to post this. I had this grand plan of wrapping up everything in less than a week, but well, we all know how that turned out. I really should know better than to set unrealistic goals for myself lol. 
> 
> This chapter is dedicated to every single one of you who have read, reviewed, lurked, bookmarked, or left kudos to this fic. Thank you for being patient with me and for giving this story a chance. As a reader, I know how frustrating it is to wait for chapter updates, so really, you guys are amazing and I love you all for sticking with me throughout this crazy excuse of a fic.
> 
> I don’t know when I’ll have time to write again, but don’t worry, you haven’t seen the last of me :)


End file.
